Authority In Lord Of The Flies, By William Golding

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In William Golding’s allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies, characters Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and a group of young British schoolboys crash land on an uninhabited island where there “aren’t any grownups anywhere” (7) or real form of authority. Some innocent children are oblivious to the direness of their situation and see the tropical island as a fun adventure where they can build sand castles and throw rocks without caring otherwise. Ralph is voted chief and Jack is appointed as leader of the hunters and as one of the carefree boys, he focuses more on hunting and less on the stability of sanity amongst the boys. Jack attempts to hunt a piglet, however a moment of hesitation and the fear of the sight of “unbearable blood” (36) proves Jack …show more content…

As Jack and two others explore the island, they come across a small pig caught in a tangle of vines and Jack strikes at the helpless animal with his knife however is unsuccessful as it gets away. Jack’s initial hesitance to kill a pig as he “laugh[s] ashamedly” (36) to brush off the fact of his inability to successfully get a kill and show his power because of “the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh” (36). Through Jack and the boys' fear of the “unbearable blood” (36), Golding instills a feeling of purity and lack of sin in Jack, showing that he is just a little boy who doesn’t know any better than to follow his instincts. Golding makes use of Jack’s reluctance to end the life of an innocent animal to exemplify Jack’s own innocence at the beginning of the novel. As the novel progresses, Golding instills the primal ways of human nature in the absence of society through Jack as he soon becomes the epitome of the brutal ways of human nature. The previous hesitance and fear of killing an animal disappears as Jack hunts and kills a pig with his hunters,

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