The Nurture documentary channel once did an experiment: let 10 boys 11-12 years old who didn't know each other live with each other. In a space where there is no adult control, food and entertainment are sufficient, everything is up to them.
However, through the lens, their “destructive” playfulness makes us seem to see civilization regress: from extreme freedom and boredom to separating strong and weak camps; from releasing violent instincts, taking pleasure in harming animals, to mutual Attacks and revenge eventually evolved into a "destructive" campaign of demolishing houses.
Such a terrible "violence" completely subverted the adult's perception of children.
However, facts speak louder than words. All this happened in 5 days- they not only showed their aggressive and aggressive side, but also made it clear that even children can't stand the test of humanity.
Did the boy fail to learn? Before the experiment, they seemed to be a group of smart and friendly children, and they were not lacking in family education. But why was their behavior so disappointing?
The next movie to talk about may give us the answer-Lord of the Flies. This movie is adapted from the work of the same name by the British modern writer William Golding. He not only won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983, In 1988, he was awarded the title by the Queen of England, which recognized his extraordinary literary achievements.
The background of "Lord of the Flies" begins in the future World War III. A group of 6-12-year-old boys suffered a plane crash during their evacuation, and unfortunately landed on a deserted island. The only adult accompanying him was also seriously injured and killed. So, in a state of letting go, these boys quickly abandoned civilization and turned black into executioners at the speed of light.
Golding dared to tear off the innocence of children, dig deep into the dark side of adults, depict the unspeakable complexity of human nature, and explore the depth and disaster of "natural evil".
01. The evil of human nature: How is the child's "evil" formed?
When I saw the summary of the story of Lord of the Flies, I wondered why the lonely protagonist in Robinson Crusoe could save himself tenaciously on a desert island, and survived the 28 years of waiting to rescue him; and “Lord of the Flies” In "The boys who can clearly help each other, but in the end turned into a carnage of "clearing out dissidents"?
Moreover, in the chaotic survival process, they exposed many problems such as terrible selfishness, narrow-mindedness, indulgence, advocating violence and irresponsibility; with the body of "child", they showed the "evil" not inferior to adults. "The King" is also known as "the fable of the development of human society".
So why did "Lord of the Flies" choose the child as the protagonist of the story? The cause and fate are related to the personal experience of the author Golding.
In addition to witnessing the cruelty of war and the animality of human beings when he was in the army, Golding also analyzed the nature of teenagers during his ten-year teaching career.
He found that "if there are no rules and regulations, many children will fight and make savage behavior."
This view directly responds to the aforementioned Nurture experiment. They all say "Don't test human nature", but often when encountering difficulties or dangers, human nature will expose itself.
The thinker Xun Zi has long put forward the "evil nature theory": evil nature is the instinct of animals, goodness is the education of etiquette and music, and moral perception is not a gift.
People are fickle because of their seven emotions and six desires, and the environment especially affects people, so don't overestimate human nature—especially the "evil of human nature", which has nothing to do with age.
Remember the story of "The three monks had no water to drink"? The boys in Lord of the Flies performed this tragedy with strength:
"Leader" Ralph uses discipline and civilization to establish order, uses "conch" as a symbol of power, and "bonfire" as a survival tool, allowing the boys to perform their duties, hoping that everyone can be rescued;
However, democracy was lost to barbarism. Jack the "Hunter" used "barbecue" as a power to gather others, and immediately conquered most of the boys. At that moment, they all focused on the desire to eat meat "in front of their eyes" and didn't care." Will it be rescued in the future?
In the strong contrast between "bonfire" and "barbecue", the former is an unknown hope or even hopeless, while the latter is an immediate benefit. As a result, the profit-seeking ideology in human nature took over the peak, and they formed the "bonfire faction" and "hunting faction" with great disparity in numbers.
However, when they can cooperate, the "hunting faction" chooses to violently persecute, using sharpened wooden sticks as a weapon to suppress the "Bonfire faction" tyrannically and domineeringly, fighting openly and secretly with a sense of "power seizure", which ultimately leads to slaughter-style looting. .
02. The evil of human nature: 3 different human natures intersect, justice and pioneers are reduced to defeat
When Jack, who advocates violence and madness, puts a "mask" on his face with wild boar blood and carbon dust, he is already the incarnation of dictatorship and demon-he hides behind the mask and unscrupulously abets his followers. There is no more shame and low self-esteem, no more kindness and humanity.
Ralph and Piggy, who represent justice and democracy, failed to hold the bottom line when negotiating with Jack-Piggy ate the meat that Jack gave. This behavior implies justice and good surrendering and compromising with "evil", weakening the power of Ralph and Piggy to be filled with indignation, making it a little more ridiculous and sad.
Although Golding criticizes the evils of human nature in a contradictory role, he is more eager to awaken the good in human nature, allowing us to realize the belief and spirit of salvation through the boy's vision.
And this hints that we can find Golding’s idea in the third human nature of the pioneer "Simon"-when the "beast" that has never appeared has been concretized in the minds of boys, only Simon realized that "wild beasts" are nothing but evil thoughts and original sins deep in the human heart.
"I mean... probably the beast is just us."
Simon is the only one among the boys who dares to explore the truth and has insight. He is a pioneer. However, most of these characters ended in tragedy: For example, Mr. Lao She's "Cat City", the pioneer "Big Eagle", eventually swallowed an excessive amount of lost leaves to die.
"The wise see the premature, the fools are darker than the accomplishment", so no one listened to Simon's words, but arrogantly roared in the night, suppressing and concealing their fear of "wild beasts" with out-of-control singing and dancing.
They danced around the bonfire, clamoring that they were not afraid of the beasts, thinking that they would gather strength; but in fact, this would only increase the fear in their hearts and deepen the illusion of the existence of the "beasts", making it easier for them to behave like a snake.
Sure enough, the tragedy happened-when Simon burst out of the darkness and wanted to tell the truth about the "beast", he was mistaken as a "beast". Everyone violently violently killed him in fear and madness. .
Afterwards, when everyone saw that it was Simon who died, everyone was silent, but did they regret it? After this, "evil" quickly swelled in their hearts.
In the movie, Ralph and Piggy, who represent rationality, civilization and kindness, did not participate in their crazy killing of Simon; but in the original book, Ralph and Piggy also participated- not only let us witness the boy The struggles for power and atrocities, and even more glimpses of the cowardly retreat in "justice", when encountering dangerous moments, the human nature of seeking good fortune and avoiding evil is silent.
Therefore, the biggest difference between the movie and the original is that the characters of the main boys are set more clearly, and the good and evil are more distinct-the evil dictatorship, the good justice and the pioneer of clarity, when the three different human natures meet, the power Weak justice and pioneers have all fallen.
Although the righteous Ralph and Piggy have the pioneer Simon to join, their "light" is too weak to guide others in the dark, nor to resist or save those who are trapped in madness and depravity.
03. The evil of human nature: the evil of children is terrible, but even more terrible is the condolences of adults and society
We can think of Simon's death as a wrong killing, but then they stoned Piggy to death, set fire to the island to hunt down Ralph, and turned the deserted island into an abattoir, which nakedly exposed the evil of human nature.
If it weren't for the plane crash, they would have been protected by adults, far away from the "hope" of bloody war, but after they landed on the desert island, they have evolved into the most ferocious executioners. This before and after comparison is undoubtedly the deepest irony and grief in Lord of the Flies.
In the end, when the officers of the British Sea Fleet went to the island to rescue them, they saw the embarrassed Ralph and the deserted island full of fireworks. The officer was puzzled. He could not imagine the "war" between the boys, let alone if he didn't. Appearing, Ralph is probably already a corpse.
Compared with the obscure ending in the movie, the disapproving attitude of the officer in the original book is full of Golding's irony of adult "sillyness":
"It's a joke." The officer said to Ralph with a grin happily: "We saw your smoke. You have been fighting or what are you doing?"
The adult's reaction makes the back chill! However, even if the officers learned the bloody truth, they would only feel pity and regret for the boys: "They are just children, and no one wants such a tragedy." Facing the dead boys, they just said a few words. It's meaningless regret.
In the cognition of some adults, underage children are synonymous with "innocent and innocent" and "no power to bind chickens". Even if children show violent or cruel behavior, they are regarded by adults as "a difference in thought" and It's just "not sensible".
For example, the phrase "what do you care about with your children", I believe many people have heard of it. This is probably the standard line of many parents and adults who have nothing to do with them.
However, in the careless indulgence of adults, some bear children "evolved" into executioners.
Do you remember the incident that "a 10-year-old girl in Dalian was killed by a 13-year-old boy" not long ago?
What is chilling and anger is not only that the prisoner is exempt from criminal responsibility because he is under 14 years of age, but what is more hateful is the indifference of the prisoner's parents. Even on the day of the incident, the prisoner's mother helped clean up the crime scene and wipe the blood stains. The prisoner also made it clear that he was under 14 years old, and the law could not help him, and he was proud to show off in private.
There is a sharp line in "Manslaughter": "Some children are beasts."
But many people disagree: what earth-shattering bad things can children do?
But too many facts tell us: children can kill.
But even though the news has reported many facts about juvenile delinquency, many adults still feel forgiven. In particular, there is the "Minor Protection Law" to protect the body, which makes criminal minors more confident.
Remember that in the movie "Confession", the female teacher whose daughter was killed by a student had to find another way for revenge, because the "Minor Protection Act" blocked her footsteps;
Moreover, the last straw that crushed her during the revenge was the doting and shelter of the prisoner’s mother: “He was cheated by a friend to help.” However, this mother, who has no distinction between good and evil and whose maternal love is so great, finally But he died under his son's chaotic sword.
It can be seen that the low cost of crime makes minors feel confident, and crime is just a "prank" for them . They are not afraid of the law and even more fearless of life; therefore, sometimes adults have no principles and boundaries. The connivance is equivalent to tolerating and nurturing traitors.
We once said, "It's not that old people are getting bad, but bad people are getting old";
Then we should be more vigilant at this moment, "It is not that a person commits a crime when he grows up, but that the person who commits a crime has not yet grown up."
Written at the end:
The movie played down the brutality of the boys in the original to a certain extent, but the rapid expansion of the evil of human nature highly restored the symbolic tragic result of the original-the battle between good and evil, and the former was defeated.
While "Lord of the Flies" exposes the evil of human nature, there are two important messages that we cannot ignore:
First, let us witness the “destructiveness” in the nature of children, which can kill people under certain circumstances; witness the “blind spots” in the cognition of adults, they only see the deceptive and weak appearance of children, but Impenetrable evil intentions in the child's heart.
Second, Golding criticized the irrational killings of human existence and history. He wanted to use "Lord of the Flies" as a children's literature to insinuate the adult world, call for the good and loving side of human nature, and at the same time guide the human spirit to gain Salvation.
In Golding's view, many people cannot recognize the darkness of their own nature, and therefore cannot control desires and evil thoughts. As a writer, his responsibility is to help us understand and face our own nature with words.
Thus, "Lord of the Flies" was born.
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