There were many deaths throughout both novels that could have been avoided, while instead they were lost. In A Tale of Two Cities, many people were left to die in the Bastille, similar to Dr. Manette; many of who did not deserve to die and could have been saved. Similarly, many of the little children died in Lord of the Flies simply do to lack of concern or care for them. In fact the big boys cared so little that they didn't even know how many little boys died. At any rate, this lack of concern for human life lead to death and was a somewhat discrete form of human cruelty. Secondly the result of this lack of concern for life was the death of the innocent. Examples of this are Dr. Manette and Piggy. They both did nothing wrong, and had good intentions, while the only reward they received was death. The ultimate result of human cruelty in the novels was death as displayed by these examples.

Cruelty in the novels was developed by the hostile conditions in which the characters became barbaric, whereas they might have not been if it were not for the horrible conditions. Much of the cruelty in the novels was brought on by similar cruelty. Madame Defarge had a deep hate for the St. Evermonde family because of the things that the family had done to her family in the past. Because her family was oppressed, she a deep desire to gain revenge on the Evermonde family, no matter the consequences. In Lord of the Flies, Jack developed a disregard for any sound rules even though he favored many rules in the beginning. This shows how a character's regard for life and order can be changed by the conditions with which he is surrounded. Before the conditions got worse in the novels the characters acted fairly reasonable, but the bad conditions brought out all of the hate and revenge in them.