Wyatt Taylor

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102-021
03 December 2015
The Root of Evil
Do you ever wonder why people become so evil or what exactly determine what defines
an evil person? Of course people who kill others, bully, or are just mean are considered evil. But
what about the others that try not to be evil or hurt people on accident or not knowing the
difference between right or wrong. Are those people evil? Many people in history are defined as
evil such as Adolf Hitler, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Charles Manson. These people are
some of the most famous evil people to ever live, but the real question was what made these
people evil? Was there something mentally wrong with them, was it revenge, or did they have
nothing better to do so the act of evil was what satisfied them the most?
The word evil is defined differently all over the world depending on peoples morals and
religion. According to Merriam Webster dictionary, evil is defined as morally reprehensible; or
arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct. To me, evil is defined as an act someone
does or expresses. For example, the first act of evil takes place in The Bible about the story of
Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were the first humans on Earth and created by God, using his own
image. They were created using Gods image because they were supposed to be like God,
meaning perfect and never doing any wrongdoing. In the Bible a fallen angel, Satan, wanted to
be more powerful than God, He knew the only way he could be me more powerful would be to
abandon God and be opposite. To do this he must try and change what Gods plan was to do.

Gods plan was to make people perfect just like him and the first people God created were Adam
and Eve. Satan knew that he had to make Adam and Eve abandoned God and break the rules.
Satan was able to do this by persuading Eve to eat the forbidden fruit and Eve then gave the fruit
to Adam. This action of disobeying God became known as sin, and because sin was created then
by Adam and Eve and they were no longer perfect making no one else perfect, except Jesus.
Although sin and evil seem the same, they are somewhat different. Duncan Heaster, the
author of The Origin of sin and evil, explains that evil was actually allowed and created by God.
He believes that evil was created as an action that someone has done due to a tragic event in his
or her life. Heaster uses The Bible which teaches sin is always the result of the human will- it is
never blamed upon something material. This is why I believe that evil cannot be something
psychological, most people have the ability to be able to distinguish right from wrong, because
of this evil is an act that is created when a person feels anger or revenge towards one another.
The definition of evil defined by Duncan Heaster is what I believe evil really is. Many
people like to describe someone as evil by the way they are portrayed but the actions of these
evil people are what makes them evil, not just their meanness or hatred. Some examples I have
come across in my life are people think other people are evil because of how they act. A good
friend of mine is actually somewhat rude to others because he believes if he doesnt like
someone then he isnt going to be very nice. But the bad thing about this is people believe he is
an evil person, but to me he is one of my bestfriends. To me he is one of the nicest people I have
ever met, he would do anything to help me if I needed him so to me he is not evil. To me this is
why the word evil has to be defined as an act. To many people and in many dictionaries the word
evil can be described as an adjective, but should be used as a verb to describe the act of a person
that commits evil acts. One of the most famous evil people of all time, Adolf Hitler, is to me the

best example I can give of an evil person because he was not considered evil until his actions
proved he was.
Adolf Hitler was one of the most powerful and influential people of all time. He was the
leader of Nazi Germany during the years of 1934-1934 which included World War 2. He rose to
fame during World War 2 because of the Holocaust which was a genocide in which
approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitlers Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Because of his power and mass execution of the Jews, Hitler rose to fame as being one of the
most evil people of all time. But before that Hitler was a normal civilized person, so the big
question is what made this man become one of the most powerful and evil person of all time?
Revenge and his childhood were the two main key factors that made Hitler become evil,
although many people believe there was something mentally wrong with him and illnesses
caused his evil. Hitlers childhood was somewhat like everyone elses from Germany, he grew in
a small town in Germany and his parents were hard working blue collar people. As a child Hitler
was very disobedient and arrogant to his parents, he did not listen very well and was somewhat a
hard kid to deal with. He was nurtured by his mother who he was very close with because she
was always there for him and helped him pursue his passion in art. His father was the opposite,
he was very ill tempered and punished Hitler many times by beating him. His father believed that
him going to school to be an artist was a waste and could do something better with his life.
Before Hitler went off to the Vienna Arts Academy to study art, his father passed away and Hitler
showed very little empathy towards the death of his father. This was a small subtle sign of what
was yet to come from Hitler. A few year later Hitler lost his mother as well showing empathy but
that was the last of it. He then joined the German army and worked his way up the ranks after
Germany surrendered in World War I. During war he was sent to the hospital after a gas attack

and he could no longer be in the army. He joined a political party where he worked his way up
the party because of his propaganda activities. He also put the blame on his misfortunes and the
fall of Germany on the Jews. Hitler then became the leader of Germany in 1934.
In 1934 when Hitler became the leader of Germany he started concentration camps to
punish the Jews. These concentration camps were used to kill and torture the Jews because they
were supposedly the ones for the fall of Germany. These actions by Hitler showed me that
revenge was his key reason for being evil and the actions of his father played a key factor in how
he could get revenge on the Jews. Hitler must have believed it was fine to punish the Jews for
their wrongdoings because his father would do that to him.
In the book Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence, Roy Baumeister writes If
victimization is the essence of evil, then the question of evil is a victims question. Perpetrators,
after all, do not need to search for explanations of what they have done. This sentence is a great
example of where he believes evil comes from. He explains that there are two reactions people
have when something shocking or bad happens to a person. A person can evil accept what he or
she deserved or can put the blame on someone or something else that happened to them. Because
just accepting the random event that has happened to a person is hard, people tend to put the
blame on others and want revenge, this creates evil.
Revenge might be the main cause of evil but power also plays a huge role as well. Hitler
became evil because of the power that was handed to him as being the leader of a country.
Having power means you can pretty much do whatever you want, but being responsible with that
power is what makes a difference between an evil person and a good person. The best example
of how power can make someone evil is the Stanford Prison Experiment. The Stanford Prison
Experiment was a study conducted by Philip Zambardo in 1971 that involved young, male

volunteers to play the role of guards and prisoners in a prison environment. The experiment was
used to study the psychological effects on the guards and prisoners. The experiment soon got out
of hand and was shut down because the prisoners started going crazy and screaming at the guards
who were taking advantage of their authority and abusing the prisoners.
The main cause of the shutdown of the Stanford Prison Experiment was the irresonsiblity
of power that the guards possessed. During the experiment, the guards became so into their roles
that they started harassing the prisoners and making the simulating what they believe real guards
do to real prisoners. The guards would wake the prisoners up in the middle of the night and
harass them to make sure the prisoners remember that they were prisoners and not normal
people. The prisoners then rebelled and started curing and spitting at the guards because of how
they were treated. The guards soon used their power and humiliated the guards and torturing
them. The guards made the prisoners strip nude, live without their beds, and some prisoners were
taken to solitary confinement because of their actions. The guards kept torturing the prisoners
which then made some of the prisoners to go insane and the experiment was shutdown. The
guards and prisoners of this experiment became so into their role that the power of the guards
started to take over. The guards soon became so powerful that the only way to take care of the
prisoners were to torture them. This power made the guards become evil people even though
they were not.
Power itself is not evil, the concept of power is just what makes people evil. Everyone
has a certain amount of power it just depends on how we use it. For example, the U.S. Military
has a tone of power, Brian Green explain saying The US military can vaporize anywhere on
earth in with a nuclear weapon in 30 minutes. Avoiding nukes, it can conventionally bomb
anywhere on earth within a few hours. That is serious, horribly dangerous power. The U.S

Military has all this power but what they decide to do with that power is what defines them, just
like people. Many people have the freedom but what they do with that freedom can make them
good or evil. People in the past such as Adolf Hitler, he was very irresponsible with his power
and used it to hurt others which is what made him evil.
Although revenge, a persons childhood, and power can all make a person become evi,
many people believe that people were born to be evil. But how could this be true? Going back to
earlier in this paper, God created people in his image and to be Gods image is to be perfect. If
people were born to be perfect like God then people could not be born to be evil. People must
become evil, but many psychologist believe that people were born with something mentally
wrong with them that could make someone evil. Some few famous psychopaths that were
believed to be born evil include Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Joel Rifkin. These are all
famous serial killers that are in American history. But what was believed to be the reason for
them being evil was something wrong in their brain. The problem with their brain was that they
were born with bad communication between the frontal lobe and the amygdala. The amygdala is
the part of the brain that is the brains central command center for our emotional reactions. The
bad communication with the amygdala and the frontal lobe creates a conflict with the
psychopaths emotions by making them feel no pain. This is why these people such as Ted
Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Joel Rifkin never had any emotion to keep killing innocent people.
These psychopaths may have mental issues but still these people had a choice to do what
they wanted. They didnt become evil though because of their mental illness. Everyone has a
choice to become evil. For example, many psychopaths in America have a mental disorder called
antisocial personality disorder. This disorder is commonly associated with psychopaths because
people who have it feel no right or wrong. According to the Mayo clinic staff People with

antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others either harshly or
with callous indifference. They may often violate the law, landing in frequent trouble, yet they
show no guilt or remorse. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have problems with
drug and alcohol use.
Personally, I do believe people with mental disorders can become evil, but it I still not the
cause of what makes a person become evil. No person is born to become evil because according
to The Bible people were born in his image and to be perfect like him. Although people were
born to be perfect, no one will ever be because everyone sins. People may sin but that does not
make them an evil person. What makes someone evil is the actions they do, meaning people can
do good things or people can commit evil acts that include murder, holocausts, and genocide. But
what makes the people become evil is what has happened to them in the past or the freedom and
power given to them and they take advantage of this in an irresponsible way. A person will never
be born evil, a person will always have the choice to become evil or to become good.

Works Cited

Baumeister, Roy F. Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence. New York: W.H. Freeman,
1997. Print.
Bottoms, Stephen. "Timeless Cruelty: Performing the Stanford Prison
Experiment."Performance Research. 19.3 (2014): 162-175. Print.
Edens, John F, John Clark, Shannon T. Smith, Jennifer Cox, and Shannon E. Kelley.
"Bold,
Smart, Dangerous and Evil: Perceived Correlates of Core Psychopathic Traits
Among Jury Panel
Members." Personality and Mental Health. 7.2 (2013):
143-153. Print.

Green, Brian. "Is Power Evil? The Ethics of Power." TheMoralMindfield. 25 Feb. 2011.
Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Heaster, Duncan. "The Origin Of Sin And Evil." The Origin Of Sin And Evil. Web. 6
Nov. 2015.

Paulson, Ronald. Sin and Evil: Moral Values in Literature. New Haven [CT: Yale

University Press, 2007.

Ryan, John, John Pielmeier, G R. Parker, Christian Duguay, Robert Carlyle, Stockard
Channing, Jena Malone, Julianna Margulies, Matthew Modine, Liev Schreiber,
Peter Stormare, Thun F. Von, and Peter O'Toole. Hitler: The Rise of Evil. Port

Washington, NY: Koch Entertainment, 2007.

The Brain. New York, N.Y: Films Media Group, 2008. Internet resource.