Evil begins with inner conflict, and that inner voice we hear is what referred to those
Negative recurring voices that we repeatedly criticize ourselves on. Inner Evilness, or Inner criticism/demons, is demonstrated in both the Gothic novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, and the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Frankenstein portrays the story of a scientist named Victor Frankenstein, in Switzerland in the 18th century, creating his own monster, and due to his ugliness, he abandons the gigantic creature, hence getting revenged by it. Lord of the Flies is an adventure novel depicting a group of boys stranded on an uninhabited isolated island during the midst of wartime. At first, everything seems peaceful where they build their own civilization, but later on, the boys splitted into two dominant groups that fight each other, leading toward murder, savageness, barbarity, and their loss of innocence. Although the two novels occur during different periods and settings, they share the same themes, conflicts, and possess common threats of characters portrayed in the two books. However, there are also differences in behaviors, feelings, and the cause/reason of the two factors.
Our feelings are what lead us toward our behaviors. Considering the prominent theme of evilness, the characters in both stories possess an overall resentful and negative feeling toward the conflicts and destructions they face. The negative emotions might aggravate or transform into positivity depending on the sequential events happening in the stories. For example, in Frankenstein, “a new species would bless me as its creator and source.” and “many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.”, Victor’s motivation for creating the monster is to gain authority. But because of his high expectation and bursting ambition exuding out of his mind, the upcoming result soon struck him. In the quote "I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion" we recognize Victor’s feeling horrified and repulsed because he is unwilling to admit that it was himself, being a professional scientist, who created this ugly creature. Moreover, when he finds out it was his own monster who damaged human civilization and brought devastating destructions toward his own loving family and friends, he falls into deep self-hesitance, guilt, shame, and despair. In the quote “Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee, miserable fiend, to torture and death” , hatred and the willingness of revenge soon dominates his whole soul. Similarly, in Lord of the Flies, Jack’s tribe’s feeling fluctuates before and after Jack’s dominance. When Ralph is still in reign, Jack feels jealous of him and attempts to seize his dominance. After he gains leadership, he feels superior and unbeatable by Ralph since he has the majority followers. Both Jack and Victor had the motivation of gaining power, but ended up in negative, disappointed feelings.
The result of disasters strongly impacts the behaviors of individuals. The behavior of isolation occurs in both Frankenstein and Lord of the Flies. After pursuing several attempts in preparation of the monster, Victor soon gave up on the dissatisfying outcome of the monster. He isolates himself apart from his creature, family, hometown and even the entire society. The monster also gets isolated from society because of its difference in appearance, which scares other people. On the other hand, Jack often isolates himself over society because he only believes in his own method of hunting and creating a “perfect” civilization. As time elapses, the other members of his tribe also isolate themselves out of society, turning out to be selfish. Chaos bursted, with wild barbarism and animal-like daily living on the island full of disrupting behaviors of selfish, isolated individuals, that together brings destruction to their own environment. Beside isolation, the behavior of overtaking power is demonstrated in both novels. The monster that Victor created overtook his own authority, so Victor ended up chasing the monster, thriving to gain back his own control of the monster. In Lord of the Flies, Jack's behavior of overtaking Ralph’s leadership results in a degradation of humanity in the civilization.
The dark side of human nature is fully portrayed in both novels, where the “beast” and the “monster” are being aggravated and stimulated. Both Victor and Jack have the ambition of possessing extreme power. In Frankenstein, Victor’s dark humanity is revealed by his neglect of responsibility toward the monster. He is absolutely careless of his creation the moment when he sees his ugly appearance; he doesn’t even consider turning him into something better, rather, he depicts him as the most disgusting thing. While Victor neglects his monster, Jack and his tribe also neglects their civilization. After living on the island for so long, individuals ignore each other’s perspectives and completely fall into the trap of degenerate practice, withholding no more teamwork. In Lord of the Flies, the beast physically refers to the female pig’s head, but as in symbolism, it indicates the “beast that lies within everyone”. Even though Jack’s tribe focuses on reality compared to Ralph merely waiting for rescue, his realism is caused by short term benefit. He failed to seek long-term safety, instead, he encouraged everyone in killing and hunting. This action is superficial victory and inner evilness. Evilness is demonstrated in the violence and murdering in both stories, since it directly impacts one’s lives. This is the worst thing to happen in dark humanity: the loss of innocent lives.
The two novels: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Lord of the Flies by William Golding, centers around the theme of inner evilness. Both novels convey the simple message that people are borned to be uncivilized. No one is completely innocent innately; in fact, people are more inclined to fall into inner evilness once having a bit connection to the evil world around them. In Frankenstein, Victor’s irresponsibility toward the monster leads to his consequence of his monster’s revenge, not only to himself, but to the entire civilization, involving his own family. While feeling hatred, shame, and revenge, Victor feels his monster is turning incessantly evil, which means no cure. Similarly, Jack’s tribe ends up losing authority, control, and innocence after long-term seeking for short-term benefits. Jack’s method in leadership turned out to be terrible, destroying the civilization's small remainder of peace and hope. Such ambition and power of gaining authority lies as the main cause of Victor’s and Jack’s failure.
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