Evil Embers Essay

Good v. Evil, it’s way more than just a concept, it’s more of a lifelong struggle inside of you. What more could you do when evil is shown all around you? Many of us may see the struggle between good and evil in the people we come across everyday. Flawed individuals may be perceived as good but are bad in the eyes of someone else; it all comes down to how you see it. The exposure to things and memories you make help impact the good in you. In order to further evaluate the argument of how good can come out of evil and good can show up even when it’s not right in front of you, can be shown in both William Golding’s novel Lord of the flies and the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. This essay asserts that,

The Webster's dictionary defines evil as 'that which is morally wrong.' Blake has some distinct morality issues. Blake, the evil force in the story, possesses

William Blake’s 1793 poem “The Tyger” has many interpretations, but its main purpose is to question God as a creator. Its poetic techniques generate a vivid picture that encourages the reader to see the Tyger as a horrifying and terrible being. The speaker addresses the question of whether or not the same God who made the lamb, a gentle creature, could have also formed the Tyger and all its darkness. This issue is addressed through many poetic devices including rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism, all of which show up throughout the poem and are combined to create a strong image of the Tyger and a less than thorough interpretation of its maker.

In this poem, each stanza is made up of two couplets. These couplets because of their steady going rhyme, reminds the reader of the Tyger’s heartbeat, beating as we say the words as Blake intended them to be read. Blake states what words he thinks are the most important to the poem by using repetition. Repetition plays a key role, for example the word “dread” is repeated many times throughout the poem, particularly in lines 12 and 15. Every time Blake repeats this word it adds emphasis to the word or phrase its used in, contributing to the image of the Tyger in each readers mind.

In this paper, I would like to explore several responses to this argument, the nature of evil, and to explain why some evils might be a necessity.

It was once suggested that evil was simply the absence of good, and while this statement is not entirely false, it is a vast understatement to the reality that is an all-powerful, omnipotent, God, or good, and ever scheming, ever tormenting enemy of all things good, or evil. This false dichotomy is equivocal to the argument that black is simply the absence of white. It is correct to state that there is no white in black, but the reality is much more complicated than that. Black is an amalgamation of all colors on the color wheel, not just the subtraction of white. Likewise, evil includes the absence of good, but also includes many other elements such as, “people [just being] people; petty, self-absorbed, stupid, unadmirable, but not wicked” (Ryken, 307) in the words of Susan Wise Bauer. Or, as she later states, “this is how the evildoers of Scripture are portrayed, as ordinary men and women who, for whatever psychological reasons, open the door to transcendent evil—and willingly leave it cracked.” (Ryken, 310) There is good, there is evil, and there is a great deal of ambiguity in the middle. These ideas provide evidence that evil is much more then simple the absence of good. This knowledge, as well as addressing the modern world’s perception of good and evil will be further scrutinized through the course of this essay.

The Coexistence of Good and Evil Eric Burdon once said, “Inside each of us there is the seed of both good and evil. It’s a constant struggle as to which one will win. And, one cannot exist without the other.” In other words, in everything one might experience, there will always be the duality of good and evil. Often in works of literature, this coexistence of good and bad is explored in a character’s values and in events that unfold throughout the story.

Throughout history, philosophers have debated the nature of man as good or evil, and the texts To Kill a Mockingbird, James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), and Vietnam War memoir The Things They Carried all detail this philosophical debate. It is argued that man is inherently of one moral fiber or another, predispositioned towards one nature or another. However, this argument is shallow and does not address what forms evil in the first place. As shown in To Kill a Mockingbird, James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), and The Things They Carried, man is not born a monster. The surrounding

Evil is in the eye of the beholder, sometimes a daily reality. To present the problem of evil you must first know that evil exists. Since God reveals himself as the all-powerful, all knowing and all good, how can the same God allow evil to exist and for bad things to happen to good people? Our suffering, as well as the suffering of others, vividly marks the presence of evil in our world. The majority of us struggle at one time or another in life with why evil happens to our family, friends, nation and ourselves. In recent news we also hear about particularly disturbing instances—a child raped, a school shooting, genocide in another country, a terrorist bombing. In this paper, I will review the literature from authors Robert M. Adams,

How good and evil are defined is based on perspective and judgmental. A person that is considered to be good has a tendency to be kind or have a reliable attitude; an evil person is someone who receives pride from the suffering of others, but they are not necessarily born that way. During this time, this book was written during Romanticism. Mary Shelley, in her novel Frankenstein, uses good and evil in the idea that good and evil cannot be based on external actions, but instead on one’s interior motives through focusing on how people stereotype morals. Since Mary Shelley wrote this book in the Romantic Era, it is normal that her works would reveal the Romantic actions.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle, the creation of the idea of “good” and “evil” are questioned. Vonnegut provokes this through Felix Hoenikker asking, “what is sin?” The basic thought of what is “good” and “bad” is made to have a sense of control to a crazy, purposeless existence. This need for order is fueled from the amoral and chaotic nature in the universe. The general understanding of what is “good” and “bad” is created by humans to feel a meaning in their lives.

The abstract concept of evil has vastly transformed throughout human history, ranging for the supernatural and mystical to the very humans amongst whom we live. In modern times, evil has become an entirely ambiguous term. Who is evil? What is evil? Men like Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein have been garnered with the term ‘evil’ for their atrocities against fellow humans. Now it seems evil has a solely human significance; when a person violates the individual rights of others on a massive scale, he/she is evil. In Shakespeare’s time – the Elizabethan era – evil had a similar, but somewhat altered connotation in the human mind. Evil was an entity that violated the English Christian

We begin to define the line between good and evil and the way in which it can corrupt human beings. The message portrayed that evil and the misuse of power is an ongoing matter, one in which could affect anyone and is partially an involuntary act – the evil animalistic behaviour becomes engraved into minds; like Goeth.

Before being good or bad, human beings are just humans who have to live with their own nature, which they sometimes cannot control. Man can do good or evil but he always makes it with a unique purpose, his personal satisfaction, because it is simply in his nature. Thus, human beings aware of good and evil are confronted with conflicting choices but they never act against their will. The poem, “The Human Abstract”, written by William Blake reflects on these characteristics of human beings and demonstrates how they are unconsciously corrupted by their own nature in a selfish way.

'The Tyger' asks who could have made the tyger. More exactly, it is asking who could have made such an evil being as the tyger. It begins with the question the poem is based on What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?, and throughout the poem, the question is asked in different forms . And what shoulder, and what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart?.