People Are Naturally Evil Analysis

Many wonder what is the root of all evil and most conclude that people are simply innately evil or have a darkness in them that is waiting to show itself. The topic of evil and where it really comes from has caused a debate among many people who take a variety of stances. One such person, William Golding, writes a novel called Lord of the Flies to display his position on the topic of evil. Through his character’s in Lord of the Flies, Golding conveys his opinion that humans are born with natural evil intent which will manifest from lack of society, however, evidence that people are born with a moral compass, that they do what they think is right, along with the constant appearance of heroes in society, prove that people are not inherently evil. …show more content…
Golding argues that humans are inherently evil and if this were true it would mean that from the time we were babies we had evil within us. In an experiment done at Yale University, babies were shown “a puppet opening a box” and a “‘good’ puppet help[ed] it open the box” while “the ‘bad’ puppet slam[ed] the box shut”. The babies were then told to pick a puppet and in “80% of the times that the experiment [was] conducted, babies [selected] the ‘good’ puppet…”(Wallace). If babies are evil then the babies would want to side with the “bad” puppet. Since this was not the case it can be said that babies are not evil and that a human who originated from a baby would be incapable of being inherently evil. Furthermore Paul Bloom, a Yale psychology professor says that , “Humans are born with a hard-wired morality, a sense of good and evil is bred in the bone”. Bloom states that humans are born with the ability to differentiate between good and bad. If humans have a moral compass that is a part of them from birth and they favor good, then it would be an impossibility for humans to have inherent