External and internal motives in people's transformation in William Golding's Lord of the Flies and José Saramago's Blindness

It is a clear fact that human being is a complex being in terms of their physical, psychological and mental structure. One of these complexities is whether s/he is essentially good or bad. The idea of whether human being is either inherently good or evil has been debated by philosophers for many centuries, and many theories were put forward. Swiss-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believes that human being is inherently good, while British philosopher Thomas Hobbes believes people are evil. On the other hand, the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill and the acclaimed psychologist Sigmund Freud claim that people are just amoral and pleasure-driven beings, which means they avoid danger and pursue the ultimate pleasure. These theories mentioned are well illustrated in William Golding's Lord of the Flies and José Saramago's Blindness. In Lord of the Flies, a group of British boys, fled from a war by a plane, crashes on an exotic island. Having no adults to help or control them, they become their own guide to survive. Some changes appear in their personality in time due to some internal and external reasons. Almost everyone ends up being little savages. In Blindness, a plague of blindness breaks out. Some people transform into savages while some suffer from it. This blindness enables them to see the true nature of humanity. Inspired by these drastic changes in human nature, this thesis aims to analyse the external and internal factors that cause people to transform into savages from modern people.