William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Lauren Slater’s Opening Skinner’s Box both take a look at human perpetuation towards evil. Slater argues that humans may commit evil deeds when obeying authority, by observing Stanley Milgram’s experiment in her second chapter, “Obscura”. In chapters one through six of Lord of the Flies, Golding examines society through the perspective of young boys, and their finding of inner evil. I think both Slater and Golding would argue that it is easy to find evil, when one loses their self. I believe that the quintessential part of “Obscura” is when Lauren Slater examines Milgram’s obedience experiment’s effect on people. In other words, Slater contends that the experiment has “managed to stamp itself so solidly into these men’s undeniably real lives” (58). Those personal interviews and stories share …show more content…
Even early in the book, the boys were having a hard time remembering what rescue was (Golding 53). First, the boys were lost, because of their situation. But the real lost situation they were facing was losing themselves. The boys being so young, as young as six years old, they have barely reached or haven’t grasped adolescence yet. They haven’t had the chance to develop into maturity yet, and therefore haven’t had the chance to set their foot down on their beliefs. For the most part, the boys are lost, but during chapters one through six, some of the boys also find something. Unfortunately, this is not exactly a good thing. They could have founded a great civilization, but instead they found something way more malevolent in chapter four, when they were hunting. Killing the first pig was the tall glass of blood they needed to spill to bring out their evil. I think they actually found their inner evil and possibly their inner self at the end of that chapter. Slowly but surely the boys are finding themselves by the middle of the