The book “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding is winding down in the next two weeks for freshmen in the English 9 Accelerated classes of Mrs. Emily Sweeney and Mrs. Beth LeBlanc.

For the past month, these students have analyzed leadership traits and symbolism found incorporated throughout the novel. They have also determined major themes and ideas and how they relate to real life.

One idea that is being explored intensively is the hidden ‘evil’ within people. Using the video “The Science of Evil” and the short story “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, students are hoping to figure out what causes people to do bad things.

“The Science of Evil” talks about three different root causes for which examples were found in “Lord of the Flies.” Currently, students are working on identifying those in “The Possibility of Evil.”

There were varied opinions on “Lord of the Flies,” some negative and some positive.

“Savages. They’re all just a bunch of savages,” freshman Shruti Mishra said.

Although the reading is finished, there is still more work to be done with the novel. This is meant to dig even deeper into the purpose of the book.

“We read the book last year. It was ‘ok.’ The deaths made the plot more interesting, as gruesome as that sounds,” sophomore Kyuzo Kelly said.

As for the extensive analysis done on the novel, there’s a reason behind that.

“Many people try to blow off the analysis, especially if they’ve read the book before. The whole point of reading class novels is to catch a deeper meaning that might not be seen when reading alone. Personally, I think annotating helps a lot when trying to understand this book as well as any other books that are analyzed,” LeBlanc said.