can a person be born to be "good" or "evil", or does a person learn to be good or evil?

Golding's main assertion is that most humans gravitate towards their darker side. This isn't to say that they are born evil rather than they have a greater propensity for the shadows of the human psyche than for the goodness. Golding Children must be taught, forced, and conditioned to be good in order to develop a sense of empathy later in life. There are certain exceptions as we saw with the few "good" characters in the story.