The topic of evil is one that has been heavily discussed throughout the course of history. Over time, many questions have arisen regarding the stem and the cause of this abstract concept of evil. What is it? Where was it created? How was it created? Why was it created? Well, truthfully, no one truly knows, but what we can assume is that since the beginning of civilisation, evil is already integrated itself into our society and is inherently present in everyone. Evil is a congenital malformation of society and is nurtured within people by the events that befall them. In Lord of the Flies and The Talented Mr Ripley, the characters start off not necessarily innocent, but not yet yielded to the evil latent in their disposition. However, as the stories develop, breaches appear in the box that encloses the evil within the various characters. Soon, they succumb to this evil.
Nature is the inherent disposition of an individual. It is something crafted by both their budding childhood and even their genetic composition. A person’s nature evolves when they mature or confront their thinking patterns, but upon reaching a certain time in your life, your nature becomes almost inalterable. Nurture, on the other hand, is the series of events that evokes certain beliefs within people. In the case of Tom Ripley and the children in Lord of the Flies, evil is what is evoked by the sequence of predicaments that are subjected upon the characters.
Mr Ripley wasn’t evil. He was just a guy who used his mathematical talent to do some casual extortion. Yes, sure he’s a bit of a dick, but evil? Not so much. All he wanted was a better life, a life that excites him, because ‘it’s better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody’. At the beginning of the novel, it was already evident that although Tom Ripley was manipulative and willing to be selfish, by no means did he intend to severely harm the people around him. From this information, we can derive that Tom Ripley’s nature isn’t what drives him to later murder Dickie in cold blood. Instead, it is the assorted occurrences that Tom encounters that compels his later evil development.
Lord of the Flies is a different story. Some characters did, in fact, have evil in their nature and were quite heinous, to begin with. One prominent example of this is Roger, who in the beginning harassed the other children, and later, killed Piggy with a boulder. Sure, Roger wasn’t always excessively evil, but even though the other children were subjected to the exact same things he went through, they did not progress towards evil at a pace nearly as fast as him. From this it can be concluded that Roger was inherently evil, it was in his nature. However, regardless of the amount of inherent evil within the children, it can ultimately still be argued that if they didn’t land on that island, many or none of them wouldn’t have been corrupted by evil, which is symbolised in the Lord of the Flies by the beast.
Now that we have established the principle reasoning behind nurture being the main catalyst for the development of evil, let us delve into how the evil within these characters multiplied and soon overwhelmed them. First, Tom Ripley was orphaned at age five, when his parents drowned. In his early childhood years, he was raised by his aunt, who was both cold and stingy towards him. During this period, his lack of a role model, or a parental figure of any sort, may be what led him astray towards his manipulative and extorting personality. However, as the plot progresses, Ripley finds himself at a fork in his life. He can either give up becoming the person he dreams to be or become the person he wishes to be by murdering someone else. To give up on your ultimate dream is to give up on oneself. Tom murders Richie, the embodiment of almost everything Tom wanted to be, and becomes him. At this point, Tom has learnt that might is right, and drastic measures must be taken to achieve radical goals. Evil has manifested. A similar situation took place in the Lord of the Flies. In order to survive on the island, the boys lost most of their moral compass and instead did whatever they instinctively believed was necessary to survive. Sometimes, this instinct can directly correlate to evil. There is also a strong symbolism of evil within the Lord of the Flies. The first taste of evil is brought about by the idea of the beast, a concrete entity existing outside of the group. This entity is essentially what split up the boys and broke their moral values. Simon later realises that the ‘beast’ is just the deceased pilot, but he also somewhat realises that the beast does exist. The beast is the evil within everyone’s mind and soul.
By the time you get here, you will already have realised, that nurture plays a bigger role than nature in the birth of evil. In saying that, by no means am I saying that nature doesn’t play a role. In fact, it does play a significant role. A good way to explain what I mean is an analogy: There are two tanks, the nature of two different people. One is bigger than another. When we fill these tanks with water (in this case symbolising nurture causing evil), one of them will fill quickly. Essentially, it is easier for some people to become evil than others. In the Lord of the Flies, Roger’s nature is evidently more corrupt than the other kids (demonstrated by him bullying the younger children for no apparent reason) and also quickly turns feral far earlier than the others do. Although Tom Ripley’s nature is not a vicious one like Roger, he ends up committing acts that are arguably more malicious than Roger’s. So what is the reason behind this? Well, using the analogy from before, Tom Ripley’s tank filled faster. Ultimately, although his nature was not necessarily bad, he encountered more events (nurture) that lead him towards evil.
These two were able to effectively make use of both nature and nurture to form an exciting plot about evil by deviating from the normal good versus evil story. Both of these stories presented evil though a different means. There was no pure evil or complete goodness, but there are degrees of both. In The Talented Mr Ripley the protagonist isn’t innocent, nor good, but he was evidently being forced into walking down the path of evil. In Lord of the Flies, the primitive savagery of human beings is exposed through the lenses of innocent children by releasing them into a place where morality is not necessarily useful for survival. Nature is the bedrock of the story and nurture is everything that is built upon it.
To answer the question posed in the title. Evil is forged by both nature and nurture.