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Literary analysis essay of Jack from Lord of the Flies
Character analysis for jack in lord of flies
Lord of the flies jack character analysis essay
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Piggy's specs are the boys' only way to starting a fire; they were a symbol of intelligence, until they went savage and lost their humanity. William Golding writes, "Jack pointed suddenly. 'His specs-use them as burning glasses!' Piggy was surrounded before he could back away," (Golding 40). Piggy is known to be the smartest boy of all the boys on the island, but Jack was the one who surprisingly pointed out that Piggy's glasses would be able to ignite a fire. At this point, the boys are still civilized and they are still trying to use the only knowledge they contain to survive. Glasses are usually a symbol of intelligence, even in today's society. Where as if a person wears glasses, then they are most likely to be labeled as "smart". Piggy's
Out of all the boys Piggy is the most reasonable. From the start he already shows a higher sense of maturity than most of the other boys. Piggy says that “we might stay here till we die” the reader can tell that Piggy doesn’t have as much of a false sense of reality like the other boys. I say as much because just before this Piggy asks Ralph “when [his] dad will arrive. This shows that even though Piggy shows some level of maturity he is still young and that shows in his speech.
When Piggy’s glasses break in half, it symbolizes the boy's descent into savageness. Glasses, by definition¹, are “a pair of lenses used to correct or assist defective eyesight for an individual with vision problems.” Obviously, these glasses are only effective when the lenses are not broken, and this principle also applies in The Lord of the Flies. In The Lord of the Flies, the goal of the boys is to survive, and get rescued off of the island. To get rescued off of the island and therefore survive, Ralph decides that the boys need a fire, to make a smoke signal so passing ships or planes can spot them. They use the lenses of Piggy’s glasses to start this fire. When Jack lets this fire go out when he is out hunting for a pig, Ralph gets very angry, because the passing ship could have rescued them. This leads to the first fight as a result of the boy's’ newfound savageness. This fight leads to Piggy’s glasses breaking for the first time. Piggy’s glasses break again when Jack’s group steals them in a bid to start a fire of their own. “I just take the conch to say this. I can’t see no more and I got to get my glasses back.
...ing the boys know that if they do not stay prim and proper, rescue will be the last thing on their minds. Piggy is the brains of the group, he is the one with all the answers. When the boys first start the fire they want smoke, but Piggy is the only one who knows why, “Course we have. ’Cos the smoke’s a signal and we can’t be rescued if we don’t have smoke” (Golding 173). Ralph’s boys all just want to get off the island at this point, they are tierd of fighting Jack and his sneaky devious ways of getting what he wants. By stealing the glasses he has an edge on everyone and the power of fire, so Piggy is trying to come up with a way to keep the smoke signal going so they can still attract any passing ships attention. With all of Piggy’s genius ideas he shares with the boys to stay safe and civil on the island, he really is not paid back with the respect he deserves.
In the beginning of Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Piggy is seen as a weak and cowardly character, allowing the boys to walk over him. Throughout the book, he becomes more confident. For example, one instance where Piggy is seen as insecure is at the first meeting on the island. Piggy tells Ralph, another fellow survivor, that he doesn’t want anybody to call him Piggy. Later, after using a conch to summon the boys to the area, Ralph reveals Piggy’s name. Instead of insisting that Piggy is not what he wanted to be called, the book states that “he went very pink, bowed his head, and cleaned his glasses again” (Golding 21). This change is negative because Piggy is them to call him by this name he didn’t want.
His glasses symbolize many different things in the novel. First, they symbolize hope. Piggy’s specs are what the boys are using to light their signal fire, and without their fire, there is no hope for them of ever being rescued from the island. Therefore, the only hope that the boys have of leaving the island is in the balance of the condition of Piggy’s glasses. Without them being in good enough condition to use to make a fire, then there would be no hope of them ever leaving the island.
Once this happened Piggy started to care less and less about the boys and more about his own safety and getting himself off the island with or without the boys. Jack had taken Piggy’s glasses to start his own fire and Piggy was very upset and he took Ralph and the twins over to Jack’s tribe and demanded his glasses back, but Ralph got a little sidetracked so Piggy brought him back. “‘Ralph remember what we came for. The fire. My specs’”(177)
In Golding’s book, Lord of the Flies, Piggy learns to stand up for himself and have more self-confidence which is a positive change. Piggy is shy and weary of his actions in the beginning but as the story progresses the troubles and responsibilities of being stranded on the island causes his self-confidence and self-esteem to grow.
Two boys from similar upbringings can both be so drastically different when put in difficult situations and given things to make them wield power, among others. Spitz says, “But his desire for many controls did not, of course, extend to controls he disliked, to those over himself. These glasses are very symbolic. They don’t just represent Piggy, but all the boys and how they must survive on the island, although they do not realize its importance yet.
In the most dire situations, some children are able to put aside their childish behaviours and become a mature adult figure, one who takes the right actions and makes mature decisions. According to the National Institutes of Health, only a certain few children are able to act maturely in situations; the other completely normal children are not able to take it seriously. Even though some people think that a child who acts adult-like is not any different than the other children, being adult-like can be very important and useful in many situations, including ones without any parental supervision. In William Golding’s most memorable novel, Lord of the Flies, the most intelligent character – an overweight boy named Piggy – makes valuable efforts and contributions to help others. When Piggy finds himself stranded on an island with many other boys, he steps up to be the most mature and sensible one. Considering it is among the last abilities to mature in the brain, Piggy has remarkable reasoning and problem-solving skills for a twelve-year-old boy. Despite the fact that Piggy is unpopular with many of the big kids on the island, he always attempts to get his adult-like knowledge and opinion across. Piggy’s love for
The kids' fear of not being rescued from the island led the group to the top of the mountain to make signal fires. They used Piggy's glasses in order to make that fire:
Lord of the Flies, a book written by William Golding, published by Faber and Faber and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is a story that talks about a group of school age boys who have landed on an unknown / uninhabited island during the second world war. Throughout their stay on the island they find ways to survive, such as finding and hunting for food as well as building basic needs like shelters and a fire. At a certain moment in the book two of the main characters, Ralph and Jack declare a war between each other because Jack refuses to have Ralph as the group’s leader for another second. This then leads to the division of the group as well as many scenes in which one sabotages the other. An example of this is when Jack’s tribe steals
Piggy was the one boy in the novel who has all the knowledge. Despite his asthma and obese problem, Piggy never failed to contribute his cerebral and intelligent ideas. He came up with all the ideas on how to survive and tried to keep the group organized and civilized. The glasses of Piggy symbolized his knowledge and smartness.
"Piggy saw the smile and misinterpreted it as friendliness. There had grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labour." (Golding 68)
Piggy a bad time, just as kids normally would. This could be Ralph's way of
In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the characters of Ralph and Piggy display a variety of similarities and differences. The characteristics I’m about to tell you will explain who the character is, and who they really are. It will show you how much courage they have, what it takes to be a leader, and how they take on responsibilities. It also shows how different Ralph and Piggy are from each other. These two boys see things differently, and have a different mind about things.