On the dystopian island of Lord of the Flies, authored by William Golding, one can observe the boy's’ descent into madness. When a group of young children were abandoned on an island without adult supervision, chaos rampaged. This loss civility is most clearly demonstrated by Jack and his effect on others. The text illustrates how quickly he succumbed to the savagery, the way his thirst for power and his dire situation brought him to barbarity, and how the boys followed suit, losing all their humanity.
In the novel, Jack began as a confident, adventuresome young boy, but as time progressed, he sunk to a level of savagery where he could hardly be considered human. The excitement was fresh on the first day when Jack, Ralph and Simon went out
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Jack’s playful innocence is clearly shown on page 25. “Come on,’ said Jack presently, ‘we’re explorers.” His upbeat and inquisitive attitude shows that though he arrived on the island with a thirst for power and an inflated ego, he was still full the joy of childhood. Quickly, this naive innocence was lost, and Jack’s blood hunger grew. This transition into darkness can be noted when Jack and his boys let the fire extinguish to slaughter a pig. The fire was their connection to the outside world, but on Jack’s orders they abandoned it to kill an animal- when they already had enough food. They chanted “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”(p.69), as they were corrupted with primal instinct and adrenaline. This act was shortsighted and gruesome, but it was not the end of Jack’s violence. Towards the end of the book, he …show more content…
While his situation allowed his personality to blossom into something horrible, the desire for blood and power already flowed through his veins. An example from the beginning, before the corruption of the boys, was when Jack first arrived at the meeting with his choir following behind. They were wearing their cloaks in the heat and Jack only let them rest after Simon had fainted. Jack’s controlling nature can be observed from the very beginning of the book. At this time, decorum still covered his bloodlust, but it was quickly triggered after he hadn’t been able to kill a pig. The text reads that “Next time there would be no mercy”(p.31) He was not only embarrassed of his weakness and wanted to uphold his status, but he was also losing the civility that an organized society ensured. The island was the key that unlocked Jack’s hidden, savage
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 knows that the boys need food and shelter, he has the ability and the follower size to provide both of those. Jack also has a strong pushing force towards others, even though he is too harsh sometimes, he always gets people to listen to him. He promised himself that he would do anything to kill a pig, showing no mercy next time. After not being able to kill the pig, Jack thought “next time there would be no mercy” (Golding 29).
Jack’s totalitarian ideals meant that due to his wild rampage of death and destruction, his bloodlust made him descend into savagery. His eventual fall into savagery begins with the sighting of a wild pig. He is fascinated but cannot bring himself to kill it due to “the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood”. This shows his innocence at the start of the novel, but his lust for blood soon overcomes the battle against his inner self. “He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up.” When he first killed the pig, Jack is ecstatic. Killing becomes an obsession to him. “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them
The fact that Jack acts like this is very important to the story. Jack’s lust for power and blood sped the story up a lot faster. It’s possible that without Jack the boys wouldn’t even become savage. Jack is also a bully, and forces the boys out of fear into what he wants them to do. In, “The Lord of the Flies”, by William Golding, Jack is pretty much equivalent to a middle school bully, but the circumstances he is in, turns him into something even worse.
When Piggy is killed, Jack doesn’t seem to care. In fact, he takes credit for it. Jack says on page 181, “See? See? That’s what you’ll get! I meant that!” I think that Jack and this point is more worried about losing the respect of his tribe and seeming weak than the fact that someone was just obliterated in front of him. This shows that he doesn't care about anything but leading his tribe, killing pigs, and killing Ralph. When he becomes obsessed with these things, it really shows how far gone he is. Jack is obsessed with killing Ralph and will do anything to kill him. In chapter 12, Jack is so focused on killing Ralph that he sets the forest on fire to try to smoke him out. This shows that Jack wants there to be no doubts that he is a true leader and that he doesn’t care what he does as long as he can kill. Jack really will struggle after they are rescued from becoming good again since he has fallen so
Through hunting and his failure to make anything of it, Jack loses the fear of bloodshed and starts to revel in the fact he can make his prey afraid of him. You can see the island and Jack’s determination to kill the pig transform him. Golding describes Jack like an animal searching for prey “dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours” with eyes that are “bolting and nearly mad” (48). His savagery is unexplainable except by explaining the innate primal instinct to do whatever it takes to survive. Even when he tries Jack can’t “convey the compulsion to track down and kill” to others but can only convince himself that he must do it (51). Jack’s need to prove himself caused an obsession, which has now turned to an unsatisfied
In Lord of the Flies, Jack’s desire to be in charge is shown from the beginning when he says, “‘I ought to be chief’ said Jack with simple arrogance…” (22). The boys decide to elect Ralph instead (23) and because of this Jack begins to look for ways to become more powerful. Though Jack clearly wanted to be in charge, he had been content with just being a hunter in the beginning. But as time goes on, there is a clear trend shown in Jack’s behavior. As his greed increases, his savagery does as well. This is shown first during the argument of meat versus survival: “Ralph spoke. ‘You let the fire go out’ Jack checked, vaguely irritated by this irrelevance but too happy to let it worry him… ‘I cut the pig’s throat,’ said Jack, proudly, and yet he twitched as he said it.” (69). Savagery, as previously stated, also has a connotation of being primitive or uncivilized and as Jack slips away from rules and organization, Jack’s desire for power grows, causing him to use violence to assert his status in the group instead of merely letting go of regulations. This eventually escalates to the dance scene where they kill Simon--where Jack’s savagery begins to intoxicate the other boys to such an
Ralph is the novel’s protagonist and tries to maintain the sense of civility and order as the boys run wild. Ralph represents the good in mankind by treating and caring for all equally, which is completely opposite of Jack’s savage nature. Jack is the antagonist in the novel and provokes the most internal evil of all the boys. Jack is seen at first as a great and innocent leader but he becomes t...
One of the things that changes Jack was his hatred and drives him to the point where he was willing to kill. In the beginning he was a choir boy who knew nothing much, but his hatred grew when he was not elected leader. In the book it quote “And you shut up! Who are you anyway? Sitting here telling people what to do. You can’t hunt, you can’t sing-” (91). This quote shows that Jack had
First, Jack is a cruel human being who says many sadistic and heartless things. This is first mentioned in the novel when Jack says, “There were lashings of blood… you should have seen it!” (69). This quote is evidence of Jack’s barbaric nature because it reveals that he enjoys the blood of the wild pigs. Also, his enjoyment of the blood leaves
Jack corrodes the group using the beast as during the meal Jack screams “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” Jack didn’t care to first scout out or pursue who the beast was and ended up killing Simon, who just came to explain his discovery of the beast. In this incident Jack caused the group to cross the boundary line to savages who lack rational thinking because of they had murdered Simon.
...would be in the pursuit of righteousness due to the fact that he was the leader of the choir at a private boys’ school. As it turns out, the results of being absent from society and the heightening desperation to survive causes the wickedness sealed away deep within him to break its chains and overtake his personality. Throughout the novel, the reader experiences the change of Jack’s character from one of righteousness and a fair leader to a schismatic, belligerent savage with no reverence for objects with sacred values. The reader can observe these obvious alterations as everybody who isn’t on his side becomes victimized by a malicious beast known by the name of Jack Merridew. The beast lurking in the darkness of Jack’s inner being maliciously exposes itself and ultimately turns a once innocent child into a bloodied savage with almost no morality left in his body.
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.
Writer Steven James said, “The true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery.” This quote can be used to accurately describe Jack Merridew, one of the young boys who becomes stranded on an unknown island in the Pacific. Lord of the Flies was written by William Golding; the novel explores the dark side of humanity and the underlying savagery in even the most civilized person. The novel opens on a group of British boys between ages six and twelve stranded on a tropical island without adult supervision. The boys elect a leader in an attempt to form a civilized society; however, their peaceful island descends into chaos as Ralph and Jack continuously argue over who should be the leader of the island. From the beginning of the novel, Jack is seen as power hungry, envious, and manipulative to further his own agenda, the anti-thesis to Ralph’s concern with social order and their future.
In the book, Lord of the Flies, William Golding writes an artistic and gruesome story of a group of boys whose plane crashes on a remote island and leaves them stranded without any adult supervision. Ralph’s main focus is on finding a way off of the island. Jack’s main focus is being the leader and creating ways to survive on the island. Instead of killing Ralph, the fire Jack sets gets them rescued. By analyzing the increase amount of blood spillage throughout Lord of the Flies, one can see how Jack’s desire for control results in great amount of spilled blood and increased lust for domination over the boys, reflecting society’s dangerous desire power and domination, including the changement of the boys’ attitudes from beginning to end.