William Goldings Lord of the flies, and Stevensons Jekyll and Hyde Essay Example for Free

William Goldings Lord of the flies, and Stevensons Jekyll and Hyde Essay Both William Goldings Lord of the flies, and Stevensons Jekyll and Hyde focus on the duality of mans evil and the reasons for that sudden change in character. Golding is rather more interested in group evil, and the way that this develops in people, whereas Stevenson focuses on singular evil and the powers that drive a man to befriend the devil. In 1954, after being in the Second World War, Golding reflected on the evil he had seen in his fellow men, and was appalled at how cruel, animal like, and savage humans could be. He wrote this book to show the real nature of men and how taking away civilized society could change people very quickly into evil creatures, once the rules have all but gone, I learned during World War two just how brutal people can be to each other. Not Just Germans or Japanese, but everyone. I tried to point that out. Some have said that the brutality of the novel is impossible, its not, look at any newspaper, William Golding emphasizing the evil theme to his book. Being a teacher in the 1950s, he was in constant contact with younger children and was shocked at their naivety and lack of belief that evil existed in their picture perfect society. So on the island to represent evil, he created Jack Merridew. Jack is a parody of Hitler, who in the 1940s was trying to take over the world with his Nazi regime, Jack stabbed in the air with his index finger, this quote shows a certain likeness to Hitlers behavior and his very evil mind. Being brought up in Victorian England, Stevenson was living in a very class orientated society. Issues such as sex, crime, and murder were all both brushed under the carpet and forgotten about, or were never spoken of in social context. Middle class Victorian men were expected to be true gentlemen to whom sex was a very low priority. This ignoring of sex and other taboo issues led many men and women to lead double lives; in public they were very orderly and well conducted but behind closed doors or when darkness fell they would emerge and show the true nature of their wildly person. Evil was also another subject that was totally ignored, and consequently people denied its existence. So, in his book Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Stevenson aimed to show that evil was alive and well in Victorian London society and that middle class peoples double personalities could be very different and often a great deal more sinister than the face that they showed in public. The amount of evil and villainous material in Victorian literature was so little, so being influenced by such novels as Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and big crimes of the day such as Jack the Ripper, he decided to write and to explore the idea of what evil in texts would be like. In Lord of the Flies evil is explored and displayed in the form of two young boys; Jack and Roger. This alone is quite unusual as young boys are not usually classed or seen as evil characters, but this book is anything but usual in every sense of the word. In this novel the main evil character, Jack has a definite need to dictate over all others around.