Issue 23

Good vs Evil’s Implications for Literature and Society

By Tanay Subramanian

It has often been said that opposite forces are complementary. Be it through light and dark, loving relationships, the attraction of magnets, or even the ancient Chinese philosophical symbol Yin and Yang, seemingly antithetical parts create the concept of dualism. This is especially evident in literature, where the theme of “Good versus Evil” is ubiquitous, juxtaposing morally righteous characters with someone antithetical who is ethically flawed, usually after undergoing a turning point in their life. From the perspective of a reader, a story isn’t entertaining if merely one force dominates the entire time, whether good or evil. Instead, literature reflects the combination of these two platforms, through the complements of protagonists and antagonists, rising action and falling action, and the figure of speech of oxymoron. William Golding’s literary work, Lord of the Flies, is the epitome of the theme of “Good versus Evil”: Golding elucidates through Jack how a once innocent character is transformed into evil because of his surroundings.

Golding’s Lord of the Flies reveals Jack’s transition from morally correct to incorrect (or good to evil), due to his environment. This selection illustrates the survival of a group of boys who are stranded on an island with no adult supervision. In chapter one of the book, Ralph, Jack, and Simon venture into the depths of the island to learn more about their location. As they are about to head back, they hear an animal squeaking – an innocent piglet. Having a large appetite, the boys try to capture and kill the animal. “He raised his arm in the air. There came a pause, a hiatus, the pig continued to scream and the creepers to jerk, and the blade continued to flash… Then the piglet tore loose… Jack’s face was white under the freckles,” (Golding 31).

The only thing preventing Jack from slaughtering the pig is his attachment to civilization, but more importantly, the sliver of morality that he retains. Just as Jack is about to strike, he realizes that he is a civilized boy from England. Killing the pig would mean that he has lost his decency, turning him into a savage. Jack’s behavior here illustrates the nurturing aspect that humans possess and how it can contain our savage instincts. His actions reflect that humans are equipped with a capacity to understand morality, as well as the knowledge to distinguish between righteousness and grim actions. Jack and the other boys are all hungry, and Jack is in the perfect position to make the kill, but his nurturing disposition is what prevents him from following through. This supports the idea that, at first, Jack is able to differentiate between good (not killing the harmless piglet) and evil (slaughtering the pig). However, his ability to recognize these two parallels of justice diminishes as the novel progresses, resulting in the emergence of his wickedness.

Jack’s evil persona is shown after he and Roger, another violent boy, brutally slaughter a pig, and Jack’s group of boys imitate this hunt while joining his eerie chant: “Then Maurice pretended to be the pig and ran squealing into the center, and the hunters, circling still, pretended to beat him. As they danced, they sang. ‘Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in,’” (Golding 75).

Not only has Jack lost his innocence and transformed into a savage, but he has also influenced his peers to follow similarly, showing that the boys have lost all their decency and no longer retain their civilized manners. The primary reason for Jack’s change is most likely to prove to the other boys that he can kill the pig, as he was taunted for not killing the pig the first time. In addition, being in a stressful environment may have affected Jack and his nurturing instincts have now been clouded by his survival affinities, turning him into a savage. These savage inclinations have most likely grown due to his desire to be accepted by others, supporting that the physical and social environment play a role in one’s ethics.

Golding continues to develop Jack — the antagonist and opposing power of Ralph — into a brute to portray that humans, despite being born with a civilized instinct, may resort to violence solely because of their desire to survive. Jack and his band excitingly reveal their killing to the rest of the group: “We spread round. I crept, on hands and knees. The spears fell out because they hadn’t barbs on. The pig ran away and made an awful noise…It turned back and ran into the circle, bleeding” (Golding 105).

Jack’s conspicuous transformation into viciousness shows his desire to survive which is accomplished by obtaining an unconventional food source – a pig. The fear of death impels the boys to find any food, no matter how disgusting it may seem, showing that the boys have lost all their decency and no longer retain their civility. Being in a stressful environment where one is forced to survive affects Jack, and his survival instincts prevail over his civilized impulses. He has turned into a savage that is willing to do anything – even brutally stab a pig – to escape starvation and essentially, death. Consequently, the basis of evil may sometimes be a motive to survive.

Jack and his band symbolize evil, whereas Ralph and his squad represent good. This separation is conspicuous because of the savagery and irrationality that distinguishes the two. Most evidently, the driving factor behind Jack’s transition into ignobility is that his life is on the line due to him being stranded on a wild island, with no aspects of civility present. After all, the boys now hunt for food, build their own shelter, and relieve themselves on a beach, instead of having access to the luxuries which are available at home. The perspective of the “Good vs. Evil” theme in this story is that by stripping away all remnants of society, Golding demonstrates through Jack’s group, how humans can quickly transform from innocent to savage (good to evil).

Golding’s Lord of the Flies illuminates how the lack of amenities can result in evil through Jack which supports the theme of “Good versus Evil.” Even in today’s society, humanity tends to forget that the world cannot exist without either “good” or “evil” people. Simply having just one or another is impossible since the spectrum of being morally righteous is subjective. The same can be compared to the concept of light and darkness. Without light, darkness cannot exist. Yet without darkness, light cannot exist. This situation exists solely because the two qualities are mediums of comparison and subjectivity, not definitive measures. Thus, “Good versus Evil” in a literary sense serves as a didactic for mankind to scrutinize not only their potential wrongdoings, but more importantly, how they can be ameliorated.

Tanay Subramanian is a senior at Dougherty Valley High School, where he competes in Varsity Extemporaneous Speaking, and Varsity Congressional Debate with a nationally-ranked team. He is an avid jazz saxophonist and teaches dozens of students across the nation as part of Tanay’s Music Foundation (tanaysmusicfoundation.org), donating the proceeds to charitable organizations. In his past time, he enjoys performing jazz at public events, in addition to conducting medical and social justice research. When he is not volunteering at John Muir Hospital or shadowing a cardiologist, he can be seen leading his Boy Scout troop as an Eagle Scout.

Works Cited
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. Penguin Books, 2003.

The Elysian Field

By Luke Nelson

This photo was taken in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming with a Nikon D5100. My family and I drove out to the Mormon Row barns in search of bison to snap photos of but did not find any. Instead I happened upon this lone tree in the middle of the meadows and captured some photos of my brother standing underneath.

Luke Nelson is a sixteen-year old junior at Polytechnic High School in Pasadena, California. He was born and raised in Pasadena and has been doing photography for about three years.

Body

By Lola Wang

The subject is an overweight woman crouching down and not looking at the viewer. I wanted to show that there are different body types, and one shouldn’t feel embarrassed for not fitting into the standards. The woman is a physical representation of people who don’t fit into society’s standard.

Lola Wang is a junior in high school at the Taipei American School in Taiwan. Her interests include art history, writing poetry, golf, and creating art.

From the Dog’s Eye, Among the Wildflowers

By Kiley Brockway

This photo was taken on one of my walks through my suburb. I love to play with perspectives on ordinary subjects because it forces us to approach the object in a new way. I’m fascinated by the overlooked ordinary, so I try to capture that in striking ways with my photos.

Just after the last frost in March is when the first April wildflowers start to pop up. I placed the camera at level with the flowers because I wanted to create an effect that not only focuses on a subject in the flowerbed but also places the onlooker in the flowerbed. The girl in the flowers adds a new depth to the photo, as she takes it from an image to a story.

I love black and white photography because I find it adds a layer of elegance and sophistication to the photo. It plays with light and shadows, creating an experience vastly different from colored photos.

Kiley Brockway is a high school senior in the Chicago suburbs. She has been previously recognized for both writing and photography in “Halfway Down the Stairs” and “Briefly Write” literary magazines, and participated in the young writers workshop through the University of Iowa. You can find more of her work @kiley_a_brockway on Instagram.

I-270

By Grace Gent

it’s 8:17 on a Sunday night in May.
the sky is bright enough
blue enough
that if the moon wasn’t shining pale above us you’d think it was
mid-afternoon.
when i turn my head
pink swaths of cloud wrap around the horizon,
cradling the last rays of sun as they
sink
into the ground.
the endless rolling green of the foothills of appalachia stretch out beyond the dashboard.
my feet are tucked beneath me,
a book cushioned in my lap,
its pages soft from years of love.
my father sits behind the wheel of the jeep he cherishes so much,
singing softly to the songs he raised me on.
a guitar hums through the speakers,
strums of americana fill the car,
vibrating through the dust-laden seats.
my father turns 51 in three months.
in four, i’ll sit on the morning damp football field of my high school with the rest of my senior class.
the cicadas won’t be singing anymore,
their song passed onto the crickets and the morning doves.
in eight months, i’ll have sent out my transcripts
to the schools i hope to spend the next four years of my life at.
in 12 months, i’ll know which school that’ll be.
when my father turns 52,
i’ll be packing my bags,
leaving the blue grey room i grew up in
for the dust bunnies.

but for now, my father is 50. we ride through the mountains that the country forgets, and i watch their secrets pass by in the twilight. tonight, my father is whistling in tune with jason isbell and i am turning the pages of a novel. and though memory is a fickle thing that i am sure exists only to confuse me, i hope that if i return to these forests, these hills, these winding roads, i remember them beautiful, held close by the moon, the future stretching into the valleys below.

Grace Gent is a high school student from Northern Virginia. When she isn’t writing she can be found forcing her dad to take her on road trips and trying very hard to learn the guitar.

Twelve Summers

By Lili Namazi

Eliza tucked paint-stained hands behind her back and took a step closer to me. Her faded summer camp T-shirt was knotted at the waist, daylily-gold skirt brushing the tops of her sandals. Standing in the blunt fluorescent of the airport terminal, her contour was more defined, shadows seeping through her neck. Graduation had weighted her to the ground like I thought nothing ever could.

We used to draw all over our geometry notes, faces and flowers and flowy dresses. They all ran into each other in the margins, collarbones intertwining with hibiscus stems, tangles of tie-dye arteries twisting through wide-rule lines to the sun. Once we realized how to put summer onto paper, we could never focus on math again.

We were always afraid of the dark. On those wide-eyed August days, we would spend the whole afternoon sprawled in tall field grass, tracing clouds with our fingertips. We stretched our arms to the sky and let hazy pinks and yellows fog our vision. But when the sky flooded periwinkle, and mosquitoes swarmed around our heads, we would run all the way to her house, set candles on the windowsills, switch on all the lamps and flashlights we owned, sit cross-legged on the floor, and wait for dawn.

And that was how it was. Every summer, from when we first learned how to stretch our arms wide like the sky, to the moment we realized we could never win against the world.

The day after graduation, she didn’t paint flowers on her jeans or run cursive paths through the open field overlooking the lake. She sat in my backyard and scuffed patches of dirt with her big toe and picked at an orange peel. And made small talk. And then a mosquito landed on her arm and she said she had to pack and she drove herself home.

That night, I fell asleep with the sunset.

She went to college in California. “Where winter doesn’t exist,” she said, burying her nose in my neck as she hugged me goodbye. She pressed a small, square canvas into my palm — a painting of a sunflower, flush against the bluest sky.

Her hazel eyes burned gold with tears as I looked up. She said, “I’m going to miss you so much.”

Half an hour till her midnight flight. Five and a half hours more, and she’d be landing to an L.A sunrise. I said, “Me too.”

I left for Chicago the next day. Full scholarship.

I can’t remember exactly when we stopped talking. We FaceTimed every day at first, and then one afternoon she had too much to do, and so it became every other day. And then once a week. And then just texting. And then silence.

I let it hurt.

Chicago doesn’t see the sun, but I wouldn’t know the difference. I have watery suns awaiting me at all hours of the day now, nestled in sagging ceilings that are either off-white or dirty. Sometimes, during lectures, I stare up at them just to feel the spots in my eyes again, but it’s not the same.

We still follow each other’s Instagrams; her posts always show up at the top of my feed. The algorithm is taking a while to catch up. She’s smiling her genuine smile in every picture, made only truer by crystalline California light, not the heavy Jersey heat we tolerated out of necessity. I wonder if her new friends — glimmering, molten, like her, like I could never be — take her to the ocean at sunrise on the warmest days of the year. I hope they do.

Once, the summer we were eight or nine, we were lying on a beach towel in her backyard, benevolently competing to name all the birdcalls we heard. As I said, “Indigo bunting,” Eliza asked, “Do you think the sun and the sky and the clouds can see us like we see them?”

Intellectually, I knew the answer. But I said, “I think they can see you.”

Her brow furrowed as she contemplated. “Why not you?”

“‘Cause I’m just me, and you’re a lot more than just you,” I said, and this, I know, is true.

I was born lonely, and then I spent twelve summers with Eliza, and now all I do is look for her.

Lili Namazi is a fourteen-year-old rising junior with a passion for all things literary and musical. When they are not writing, composing, or playing an instrument, you will probably find them drinking iced coffee, listening to music, and daydreaming. They plan to continue their artistic pursuits in college and as their career.