What is the source of evil? The source of evil is unknown but in Christianity it is caused by Lucifer, once God’s favorite angel, then the rebel who tried to supplant God and ended reigning in hell. It was the devil who, in the form of a snake, tempted Eve with the same sin he himself had committed, the desire to be as a god. After Adam and Eve sinned and fell from grace they were cursed by God and expelled from the Garden of Eden, and ever since then fallen man has struggled with his sinful nature. That is one theory. Arthur Miller (1957), says he believes in the existence of evil that know it is evil and loves it (p. 165). The Puritans of Salem, in Miller’s play The Crucible (1951), initiated the witch hunts because they believed all evil had an external source, the devil himself, who could take over the mind and soul of those who were not vigilant enough to defend themselves against corruption. Mary Shelley (1818), in Frankenstein , has a different view, saying that even the sweetest natures such as the monster’s can be corrupted by society, turning an angelic being into an evil one and making him commit the most violent crimes even though that individual hates the evil in himself. William Golding (1954), in his novel Lord of the Flies offers yet another explanation, that we all carry the potential for evil within us, primarily in our instincts, but that the instincts do not necessarily predispose us to do evil. This essay will argue in favor of Golding’s theory in conjunction with Shelley’s: we all have the potential to do great good or evil but what we end up doing depends on the society in which we live. In The Crucible , Miller (1953) presents a historically accurate, dramatized recreation of the events in 1692, what he calls “one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history” (p. 2) that led to the prosecution of some 150 people in what is now known as the Salem Witch Hunts. Nineteen people were hanged, fifteen of them women, and one man was crushed to death during the attempt to make him confess. Miller intentionally drew a parallel between those witch hunts and the ones which were being conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) at the time of writing. Both were the product of mass hysteria, the one caused by the threat of the devil, the other by the threat of godless Communism. In both cases, evil was done in the name of a greater good, in effect using evil in the fight against evil. The town of Salem was founded by Puritans who had fled England in order to create a religious community without fear of persecution at the hands of the Church of England. They firmly believed in the existence of the Devil and in his ability to commune with human beings, because for them there was no other explanation possible for the existence of evil in a world created by a perfect God. When there seems to be an outbreak of aberrant behavior, the town’s clergyman calls in the Reverend John Hale of Beverly who is an expert in the works and methods of the devil. He arrives in Salem armed with the expertise he has acquired over years of study of the wiliest creature of them all. At that time, his specialty is a highly respected one, but Miller (1953) notes that since 1692 “a great but superficial change has wiped out God’s beard and the Devil’s horns.” It