Man's Innate Evil in A Clockwork Orange and Other Works

There is a question that has been going around for years. The question is whether man is born good or evil. One movie that portrays man is inherently evil is “A Clockwork Orange” by Stanley Kubrick. The movie is about the boy who rapes and tortures people for fun. He ends up going to prison and starts to act like he regrets his actions so he can be accepted into a program. He continues to have evil thoughts and feelings. The definition of evil is profoundly immoral and wicked. Most people relate evil to the devil, but evil could also be related to people. Man is inherently evil.

An example from society to prove man is inherently evil is the Milgram Experiment. The Milgram Experiment was a psychology experiment directed to test obedience to authority figures. This experiment was conducted in 1963. Subjects were told to execute electric shocks to another subject when they gave the wrong answer and increasing the voltage each time. (Andersson) A lot of the participants, exactly sixty five percent continued to give out shocks to the maximum of 450 volts. The subjects that continued to distribute the shocks even with screams. Many of the participants encountered anger and anxiety from this experiment. After the participants who administered the shocks were done, they left the experiment under the impression that they truly harmed people by shocking them. The results of this experiment were very surprising and unanticipated. The outcome of this experiment reveal that human beings were able and prepared to administer pain, in this case shocks to other people, even strangers. (Hollander) The results of Milgram’s experiment taught everyone something about us as human beings. It taught us “just how powerful our propensity is to obey the commands of an authority, even when those commands might conflict with our moral principles.” (Hollander) This experiment was one of the first things to ever teach us that man can be inherently evil.

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Eight years after the Milgram experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment occurred. This experiments purpose was to show how our behavior can be influenced by social roles. Philip Zimbardo conducted this experiment. Before this experimented started, Zimbardo stated that everyone involved in this experiment were going to take away the prisoners’ individuality in many ways. There were two roles in this experiment. There were guards and there were prisoners. The guards dehumanizing the prisoners. The prisoners were referred to by a number instead of their names. The prisoners did not get beds, so they were forced to sleep on the concrete floor. The guards made prisoners were absolutely no clothes but made them wear a paper bag over their head. The guards also did not allow the prisoners to use the bathrooms and made the prisoners perform homosexual acts with other prisoners. (Gross) The prisoners started to plan a riot on the second day within starting this experiment. The prisoners started to get riled up and the guards did not like that. The guards used fire extinguishers to calm the prisoners down. Using the fire extinguisher on people could burn their skin. One of the people that were apart of the experiment stated, “by the sixth day, the guards had become so abusive and degrading that Zimbardo ended the experiment early.” (Gross) One of the guards who participated in the experiment stated that he didn’t have any regrets or guilt for his actions during the experiment. The guards were brutal physically and emotionally to the prisoners. One of the prisoners from this experiment (#8612) had a mental breakdown from the physical and emotional abuse because of the guards. After that prisoner had a mental breakdown so did another prisoner. Prisoner #819 was told to go into a separate room to calm down. The guards did not like that prisoner #819 was having a mental breakdown. The guards made all the prisoners say “prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what prisoner #819 did my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer” over and over. Eventually prisoner #819 heard the prisoners saying that and he started to cry and have another mental breakdown. (Mcleod) The prisoner was told to leave since he was suffering mentally but he believed that he was an actual prisoner in a prison. Zimbardo saw the results of the experiment and concluded that people will undertake the social role, even if it means hurting another human being physically or mentally. (Mcleod) This experiment also showed that man can and will hurt people based on their social role.

Ted Bundy is one of the most famous serial killers in the world. He confessed to raping and killing thirty women, but many believe there could be over a hundred victims. He murdered women from many different states. He killed women in California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Ted Bundy knew what he was doing was very wrong and cruel, but he continued to do it because in his eyes it was fun and something to do. One of the victims he killed, he fractured her skull with a metal rod which caused permanent brain damage and he proceeded to shove the metal rod up her vagina. (Schechter, Everitt 37) When he found his next girl he would sneak into their room at night and rape and kill them. “He simply slipped into their rooms at night and pounced with demonical fury.” (Schechter, Everitt 38) One of his victims he got violent with. He bit this women’s butt so hard that his teeth marks were left in her butt. These imprints helped lead to his arrest. When Ted Bundy found a girl he wanted, he would act like he had a broken bone and that he needed their help with something. The girls never thought anything bad of it. Ted Bundy looked like a normal guy. You wouldn’t expect him to be a serial killer. When the girls went with Bundy to help him that’s when he would beat them, rape them, and murder them. After Bundy escaped prison he traveled down to Florida. When he went down there, he found three girls he liked for his next victims. Two of the girls he killed and raped. The third girl was injured by the strikes to her head. (Newton) Ted Bundy killed thirty women, possibly over a hundred for no definite reason. Bundy had no regrets for the crimes he committed. Ted Bundy is a prime example that man is inherently evil.

The Lord of the Flies written by William Golding has a common theme throughout the whole book. That ongoing common theme is that man is inherently evil. The boys in this book are stranded on an island with no society or structure like they’re used to. Since the boys don’t have any rules or structure, they start to commit acts of evilness without any problems. Ralph and Jack are two of the main characters. Jack represents evil throughout the book. As the boys start to spend more days on the island, the idea of “the beast” starts to manifest. Simon was the first one to mention seeing the beast. One night they boys thought they saw the beast, but it was just Simon. The boys killed Simon because they “thought” he was the beast. Jack develops a group of boys for hunting. Towards the end of the book, they become evil, so evil that Roger pushed a rock off a cliff that killed piggy. Nobody cared that Piggy was dead except Ralph. Ralph feared Jack and his tribe since Piggy was the only one of his side. The beast that they boys fear is actually the evil within themselves that they fear. Golding was showing that when society and reality is away from you, you tend to act in evil way. This proves that man is inherently evil.