Dewal Nath
Ms. Shah
English 8
5/12/17
Something which has no body, no soul, and no emotions can’t do anything, right? If used by the right person, something without a physical body or a brain can bring a civilization such as ours to its knees. Jack Merridew is the young, arrogant boy who stars as the antagonist in The Lord of the Flies. He feels the need to control and command everyone on the island. He shows that there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and that if you’re not careful you may become a weapon for other people. The book’s author, William Golding shows that a normal human being can change for the worse when put in situations such as this. Jack changes from a boy who wanted to help the group to a deceitful savage
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who used everyone. Jack makes the group his weapon and his target; resistance. Jack is the arrogant, straightforward, self-appointed leader, and antagonist of this book. He fuels most of the problems and makes everyone’s time on the island even harder than it should be. Throughout the story, we see Jack trying to mobilize the boys, but he seems to do this as an instinct. There’s no sign of him doing it with any forethought of killing everybody. Golding is trying to show that humans instinctively turn to deception, deceit, etc. Golding shapes Jack’s character to be someone who’s confident, dominant, and has the qualities of a king. Having characteristics like a king is bad in this context because he starts commanding everyone which leads there to be more tension. One example of Jack’s blunt attitude is when Ralph suggests they should have a chief the books says, ““I ought to be chief,” said Jack with a simple arrogance” (Golding, 22). Then he goes on to list his capabilities thus making him look like a good candidate in the eyes of the others. This scene displays how he likes to assert dominance from the start and how he likes taking control. Jack always makes sure he gets his point out and that everyone acknowledges his presence. The way he immediately volunteered to be chief showed how he felt that it was his right to be chief since he was head of the choir. Everyone except the choir group votes for Ralph which makes Jack furious, but he is suppressed by the fact that he has control of the hunters. By the time the readers are comfortable with the characters and start getting attached to the characters, Golding starts to introduce the manipulative side of Jack. Golding starts showing Jack’s true form; a deceitful and smug boy. Even though it may not seem like Jack cares about the beast, he actually does. Jack wants there to be a beast because the concept of a beast gives him leverage over the boys. Jack can give the boys the illusion of protection, support, etc. After Ralph scolded Jack for letting the fire go out, everyone goes to eat and the situation is no longer tense. Simon, however, doesn’t eat because his far-sightedness shows him what troubles are coming. Jack then says, “Eat! Damn you...Take it!” and throws meat at Simon’s feet (Golding, 74). He also turns to the group to say, “I got you meat…I painted my face-I stole up. Now you eat-all of you” (Golding, 74). He does this because if anyone says that he made them miss the ship, he can always say that he brought food for them. This gives him more leverage and a bigger advantage over the boys. Another characteristic of Jack that Golding puts in the spotlight is his short temper. Jack changes over time by becoming even more arrogant, short tempered, and confident. By the end of the story, Jack’s arrogance has no limits and he doesn’t care about the conch or any other rules because he knows that he has people that will back him up and support him if need be. At this point in the story Jack has enough manpower that he can do whatever he wants. Becoming a leader contributed to his rise in arrogance and confidence. When Ralph, Piggy, and the twins go to confront Jack about Piggy’s glasses Ralph says to Jack, “You came sneaking up like a thief and stole Piggy’s glasses!” and Jack replies with a furious, “Say that again!” (Golding, 176). Ralph promptly says it again and then Jack rushes at Ralph in an attempt to stab him. In this scene, Golding shows how even a few short words can make someone who already has everything feel offended or hurt. In this case, Jack was offended, not hurt. Golding’s depicts Jack to be a manipulative trickster. It seems Golding wanted to show the dark side of humanity and what would happen when a normal person is put into that situation. Jack utilizes his one main area of expertise to lure the boys into siding with him. Whenever he needs to stress a point he finds some way to include hunting, thus exciting the boys and gaining more support. Jack got lucky that hunting was his area of expertise and something the boys favored. Hunting was useful to Jack because the boys liked it. No one except Ralph, Piggy, the twins, Simon, etc. liked or wanted to build a fire or do anything that helped them get rescued. Activities beneficial to their salvation didn’t contain the adrenaline rush that they wanted. When Jack is about to leave the group, he says, “I’m going off by myself… Anyone who wants to hunt when I do can come too” (Golding, 127). This shows how much he stresses hunting and how he uses it as a lure. Out of anything he could’ve said to convince people to join his group he chose to talk about hunting. When Jack is sixing up his new tribe after leaving Ralph’s he looks at the few people in front of him and says, “We’ll hunt and I’m going to be chief” (Golding, 133). This shows that Jack keeps hunting as a priority throughout the story whether it be hunting pigs or people. Jack uses hunting as his biggest excuse and a form of distraction. One time he uses hunting as a distraction is when Ralph is mad at Jack for taking the twins with him to hunt instead of leaving them to watch the fire. Because of this, a ship passed them and couldn’t be hailed by smoke. Jack ignored Ralph’s words and kept saying, “There was lashings of blood… you should’ve seen it” (Golding, 69). He said this as if it was an enjoyable event. In the book, right after he says all this is shows that the boys get excited from hearing and reliving the experience. He directs everyone’s attention to the fact that the needed the meat and how fun killing the pig was that Ralph’s claim goes mostly unnoticed. In that situation, Jack was at fault and should’ve apologized immediately instead of apologizing after things got out of hand. Jack always manages to slip by in situations like this by blaming someone else. Throughout the story, Jack focuses on utilizing two key emotions which are fear and excitement. Jack instills fear of the beast and how it could kill them so he could persuade the boys to try and kill the beast first. On one occasion, he even convinces the boys to leave part of their kill as an offering to the beast. All the boys remain loyal and follow Jack because of the excitement he provides. One example of when he riles up the boys is when the beast was first sighted by the twins. Jack realized it was a good opportunity to tie the sightings and the idea of a beast on the island with them to a physical body, thus making his claim more believable. During their impromptu meeting after the first sighting Jack says, “This’ll be a real hunt! Who’ll come!” (Golding, 100). In the end, Golding beautifully depicts how Jack’s “hunter” attitude leads him to make bad decisions. All of Jack’s characteristics, behavioral qualities, and his manipulative tactics lead him to use the beast to shape and influence the boys.
The beast was the perfect opportunity for Jack to turn the boys against Ralph and take over. In the start of the book Jack brushes off the idea of there being a beast or ghost on the island and at their assembly says, “Fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream” (Golding, 82). This line shows that he thinks they are overreacting and the beast is merely a dream. He is very dismissive of the thought that there is a beast on the island, but he doesn’t know that the beast, whether it’s real or not, would become his ally in the downfall of their group. When he says this line, he is met with disapproval and the littluns along with the few biguns who believe there is a beast disagree with him. He notices how deeply they believe in the beast or another presence being there on the island with them and takes advantage of that. After this scene, he changes and slowly starts fueling their fear. When the Lord of the Flies is talking to Simon he says, “We are going to have fun on this island! So don’t try it on, my poor misguided boy, or else” (Golding, 144). In this line, the Lord of the Flies tells Simon that the boys will have fun on the Island and the dark force which is the Lord of the Flies will have power over them. The Lord of the Flies says that Simon will never be able to stop him or the boys. What the Lord of the Flies said sounds very familiar to what Jack says. The Lord of the Flies and Jack seem to have the same intentions. Jack manages to convince the boys to side with him most of the time because Jack harnesses the influence and deceptiveness of the beast. The beast is the only way Jack can make people favor him and it’s the only way he can recruit people to his group. Throughout the story, we see Jack using hunting as an excuse, distraction, and a way to gain support. We see him using the beast to support his claim that
hunting is useful when he calls the assembly right before leaving the tribe. Jack says, “The beast is sitting up there, whatever it is...” (Golding, 126) and then goes on to say that the beast is hunting. He accentuates that to kill a hunter, you must be a hunter. He also says, “The next thing is that we couldn’t kill it. And the next is that Ralph said my hunters are no good” and “Ralph thinks you’re cowards, running away from the boar and beast” (Golding, 126). He says these things to attract attention to Ralph and in a sense, uses the beast to magnify what Ralph supposedly said. After Jack realizes that the beast can help him achieve the power he wants, Jack starts using a scare tactic. For a scare tactic, you don’t really need there to be any real threat. If everyone else believes there is a threat then they can be easily manipulated. Jack makes the beast the group’s common enemy and makes it a universal fear. Jack fuels the concept of a beast and everyone trusts him because he’s been across the whole island and seemed to be knowledgeable. This leads the boys the follow him blindly, thus letting him do whatever he wants. The beast is a concept, nothing real, but is used by Jack in such a gruesome way that maybe having a real beast would’ve been better. Jack mutates the dark side of humanity, referred to as the beast in this story, into something he used to bring down a whole group of civilized boys who knew what being humane was. Jack lapses and succumbs to the dark side of humanity, thus making him misleading and untrustworthy. Golding shows Jack starting out as a young civilized boy, who loved to take the wheel and then transforming into a savage man who wouldn’t stop until all opposition was wiped.
Our first aspect of Fear in the novel comes into play with the Beast. This fictional character becomes the center of the boys problems on the island and brings a long chaos and death. Simon is murdered due to the befuddlement of Simon being mistaken as the beast when in fact he was the jesus like figure and his death was a representation of sacrifice. The beast was not something tangible it was simply the boys because the beast was themselves. Our biggest demons in life rest within oneself, and on the island the beast was just a justification for the boys to blame their wrong doings on. William Golding refers to this using the role of simon by stating: “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are" (158)?
In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Simon and Piggy are among a group of boys who become stranded on a deserted island. Left without any adults, the boys attempt to create an orderly society. However, as the novel progresses, the boys struggle to sustain civility. Slowly, Jack and his hunters begin to lose sight of being rescued and start to act more savagely, especially as fears about a beast on the island spread. As the conflict progresses, Jack and Ralph battle for power. The boys’ struggle with the physical obstacles of the island leads them to face a new unexpected challenge: human nature. One of the boys, Simon, soon discovers that the “beast” appears not to be something physical, but a flaw within all humans
Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, has four very important dynamic characters. A dynamic character is a character that develops and grows during the course of the story. Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon are four dynamic characters in Lord of the Flies that adapt to their new lifestyles in different ways. Jack is a very important dynamic character in Lord of the Flies because he goes through the most changes during the novel. While on the island, Jack has many life experiences that change him forever. Jack never thought he would live his life the way he is living his life in the island. Jack’s authoritative figure, savage-like/instinctual behavior, and violence are three qualities that make Jack a dynamic character.
In Lord of the Flies, a group of boys are stranded on a deserted island. It starts out fine, until one of the boys, Jack, becomes jealous that he isn’t in charge. He forms a separate tribe. One night they start a war type of dance, chanting and screaming. They mistake Simon for the beast and kill him screaming “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” (Goulding 138) After the boys realize they had killed Simon, they realized that who else would give them hope that they could survive, and keep the peace around the island. After Simon died Jack started to gain more power, because Ralph had lost a valuable member of his
Civilization is the force that keeps us all in line. We are taught from an early age that if we break a rule, we are punished. Why? Because that’s how society works. What would happen, though, if we took away society, civilization, and punishment. Would we keep up the rules that had been etched into us since birth and keep living in a civilized manner? In Lord of the Flies, Golding explores this scenario. In his opinion, a person would abandon all ideas of society and revert into a savage, relying on primal instincts to survive. The main character that goes through this is Jack. Throughout the book, Jack goes from being a civilized choir boy to a savage tyrant.
How Ralph and Jack Change William Golding wrote the story "Lord of the flies". It is about a large group of schoolboys whose plane has crashed. They get stranded on a desert island. The story is about their survival and how they run their everyday lives. The two main characters Jack and Ralph are both from upper class
As Jack hunts his “frustration seemed bolting and nearly mad” which shines in his slowly deranging eyes (Golding 67). In Lord Of The Flies by William Golding, stranded boys struggle to find order and civilization on an island with no other humans. After their plane crash lands, a few boys, such as Ralph and Piggy, are quick to set up standard rules. But, not everyone agrees that rules and rescue are what is most important. Jack, a boy who cares more about hunting, disrupts the goodness and order that remains in the boys. When a simulated hunting influenced and led by Jack goes awry, the boys kill Simon. The now deceased Simon is the purest and kindest of the boys. Jack leads the elimination of the only good left on their island. Whether it is his intention to kill him or not, Jack should be held responsible for Simon’s demise because he leads the group to kill him, regardless of his age.
In the novel, Lord of the Flies, Jack is the character that experiences the most change. Jack begins the novel as a somewhat arrogant choirboy, who cries when he is not elected leader of the island. Jack is gradually transformed into a vicious killer who has no respect for human life. Through a series of stages, such as leading the choir, leading the hunting tribe, wearing the mask, killing Simon, separating from the group and intentionally killing Piggy, Jack degenerates from a normal, arrogant school boy into a savage beast.
The most destructive force on the island is not a physical being, but rather a fear that lives within the boys. The three fears that were stated above, Jack’s fear of not being chief, Ralph’s fear of not surviving and the boys’ fear of the beast, has made the most impact in the book Lord of the Flies. Throughout the book, the boys have the power and the strength to overcome their fears and work together as a group but in the end, they choose not to by letting themselves accept their inner savageness. Fear is a very strong motivator, but it is up to the humans to use that for the benefit of others and themselves. Conclusively, it is either the fear controls the person or the person controls the fear.
William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of The Flies’ tells the story of a group of English boys isolated on a desert island, left to attempt to retain civilisation. In the novel, Golding shows one of the boys, Jack, to change significantly. At the beginning of the book, Jack’s character desires power and although he does not immediately get it, he retains the values of civilized behaviour. However, as the story proceeds, his character becomes more savage, leaving behind the values of society. Jack uses fear of the beast to control the other boys and he changes to become the book’s representation of savagery, violence and domination. He is first taken over with an obsession to hunt, which leads to a change in his physical appearance This change of character is significant as he leads the other boys into savagery, representing Golding’s views of there being a bad and unforgiving nature to every human.
Jack Merridew is the devil-like figure in the story, Lord of the Flies. Jack is wicked in nature having no feelings for any living creature. His appearance and behavior intimidates the others from their first encounter. The leading savage, Jack leans more towards hunting and killing and is the main reason behind the splitting of the boys. It has been said that Jack represents the evilness of human nature; but in the end, Jack is almost a hero. With his totalitarian leadership, he was able to organize the group of boys into a useful and productive society
On contrary from all the other boys on the island Simon, a Christ like figure in the novel, did not fear the ‘beastie’ or the unknown. “Maybe there is a beast....maybe it's only us” Simon explained. (p. 97) The fear of the unknown in the novel contributes to the boys’ terror of the beast, the beast is an imaginary figure which lays in all of the boys’ minds and haunts them. Golding uses the beast as a symbol of the evil that exists in every creature. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are the way they are?" The sow head announced to Simon to be the “lord of the flies”. The “lord of the flies” is a figure of the devil, and brings out all the evil and fear in people. It wants you to fear it, but if you don’t believe in the “lord of the flies” nothing can happen to you. Therefore Simon didn’t fall into the trap, but the beast killed him, meaning the other boys on the island did. Simon discovered that the beast is in fact just a dead parachute man before he died and ran down to tell the boys about his finding. When Sim...
Another of the most important symbols used to present the theme of the novel is the beast. In the imaginations of many of the boys, the beast is a tangible source of evil on the island. However, in reality, it represents the evil naturally present within everyone, which is causing life on the island to deteriorate. Simon begins to realize this even before his encounter with the Lord of the Flies, and during one argument over the existence of a beast, he attempts to share his insight with the others.
* Jack did not have the integrity to keep the Beast at bay. It slowly crept into him and later took full control once he put on the painted mask. He is the perpetrator of the two deaths that occur on the island and wishes to spend his time hunting (killing) instead of helping Ralph with being rescued.
In the book, Lord of the Flies, character Jack Merridew represents Id. From the beginning of the book, Jack has anger and savagery and also a slight childish character. One reason I think Jack is the Id is because he could care less about order or rules. For example in the novel Jack leaves the original group because he didn’t like the rules Ralph ordered. “He’s not a hunter. He’d never have got us meat. He isn’t a perfect and we don’t know anything about him. He just gives us orders and expects people to obey for nothing..” (Golding 126). Since Jack is the Id he comes with temper and wildness. All the other boys are younger and will tend to go with the person that seems more fun and where they will have to be less likely to follow rules.