The Destruction Of Human Nature And Self-redemption

William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a masterpiece in world literature. In this novel, Golding's concern is to lay bare the human nature and the nature of the world.The interpretations and studies of this novel extend over symbolism, feminism, Jung's theories of collective unconsciousness and other theories. These analyses lie in the Confucianism reading of this novel, differing in theories, approaches and conclusions with other thesis.The theme of this novel Lord of the Flies questions the nature of man in an inhabited island to warn the people of the evil-trend in humanity free from regulations of society. Man is easily to be submitting to the evil-trend in the heart. Here the intention of this study is to make an ethical study of the human nature of the characters in Lord of the Flies. Through this study, the reader can see clearly that in the traditional Confucianism the essence of the human nature is good. Then another issue is aroused for the readers to consider: why and how the characters in Lord of the Flies maintain and deflect their nature from the original course when the social restrains are taken off. The following thesis deals with this issue by analyzing the characters' inner nature, the outer environment influence and the relation of the two to enlighten the theme that although the human nature is in its essence capable of becoming good, the self-discipline should be reinforced to avoid the darkness within human beings. This process gives us an alarm and revelation of human condition in the world today.The thesis consists of five parts:Chapter 1 gives a presentation of the general ideas of Lord of the Flies and reviews its literature value.Chapter 2 presents an account on the current situation of the studies on Lord of the Flies and clarifies the purpose of rereading this novel and the theoretical basis.Chapter 3 focuses on comparing the oriental and occidental ethics on human nature and concludes the significance of studying this theme. It also aims to enlighten which kind of ethics on human nature is more objective and acceptable.Chapter 4 is the main part of this thesis. In this chapter the traditional Confucianism ethical theories are employed to analyze the characters' features in the novel. In Confucianism man is believed to be born with a kind nature but the posterior educational and living background may cause evil. With these detailed discussion on the characters' features, the thesis draws the conclusion that the essence of human nature is good. However man should pay special attention to the self-control and try to curb the dark side in the nature of human beings. With the guidance of Confucianism human beings do have the ability to carry the goodness forward and resist the darkness.Chapter 5 gives us a conclusion basing on the analysis of the whole thesis to get the central theme of the paper that human beings are good in nature but it does have some evil-trend. So long as man can face up to the fact, human beings will have a bright future.