In The Zoo Story by Edward Albee, Jerry is able to confront his own forms of darkness in order to achieve a full outlook in life. Jerry is able to accept loss and cruelty in life in order to become a full member and participant in society. He reaches this epiphany through his relationship with his neighbor’s dog. When Jerry enters his home building, he is constantly interrupted but the dog and his growling. His daily routine consists of worrying about this dog, and not being able to complete his own duties. So Jerry decides to lay out burger meat for the dog in hopes to form a relationship. However, when that fails, he plans to poison the dog. Though the murder was unsuccessful Jerry used this as an opportunity to learn many valuable life …show more content…
Without cruelty, kindness would be meaningless, and without loss, gain would be negligible. Jerry sees that the balance of the two allow him to live in acceptance of himself and others. By facing these rules of society instead of ignoring them, he can become a complete human. Instead of inhabiting with other animals and humans, he can now coexist with them. He can get along with them, and form a relationship. He sees that people on this earth are merely segregated animals coexisting in separate bubbles, and the only way one can get along is to accept cruelty and loss as well as the respecting the other bubbles.
In “Lord of the Flies”, the antagonist Jack not only confronts his darkness, but his darkness confronts him. Jack and other young boys are stranded on a desert island and are forced to assimilate into new circumstances. However, in contradiction to Jack, other parallel characters such as Ralph, are able to live amongst these new struggles instead of becoming them. Jack exemplifies how recognizing the darkness can destroy one 's spirit and compel them into evil instead of enlightening them on acceptance. Throughout the relationship between jack and ralph, we can see the deterioration of Jack 's humanity in contrast to Ralph. Initially on the island, Jack and Ralph share a mutual respect in addition to a distribution of leadership on the
The Lord of the Flies is a story about a group of boys who are stranded on an island. There aren’t any adults with them because the plane they were on had crashed and the pilot died, he had been the only adult with them. That main character Ralph is elected chief of the boys and is supposed to be in charge, but finds it hard to keep control. Ralph believes the most important thing is to keep the fire going, so that if a ship passes by they can get rescued. As the story goes on dissent begins to form among the other boys. The leader of this dissent was Jack. He had wanted to have control from the beginning and was fed up with Ralph’s rules.
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.
Initially, our first thoughts of Jerry at the beginning of the story, is that he acts immature and is burdened within a circle of maternal protection. During the opening of the story, the author conveys Jerry’s relative childishness by labeling him as “the boy”. The author also uses the mother to demonstrate his youth and how he is trapped in a circle of maternal protection which leads us to think that he is lonely due to that reason. In this part, “His mother walks in front of him, carrying a bright white strap in one hand” tells us that because the mother was walking in front of him, it gives us the impression that the mother still thinks of him as a boy that needs to be protected from any potential harm. We see more of Jerry’s immaturity and how the burden of protection leads his actions as we go through the story. During the part where Jerry sees the group of boys acting free-spirited, we see that he is overcome with desire to be with them, probably because he feels that because he is always in the circle of protection making him feel lonely and isolated from everyone. At first, he is added into the group and begins to have fun jumping from the cliff into the water with the other boys. Later on however, he starts to act immature when he realizes he could not do the same thing the other boys were doing. That was, underwater for a long time and going through the dark tunnel and he becomes scared. In this passage,“... In a panic of failure, he yelled up, in English, “Look at me! Look!” and he began splashing and kicking the water like a
In the novel Lord of the Flies, Jack Merridew is seen as a character that wants to be leader and have power over everyone. His presence seems to terrify all the boys on the island, and uses this to his advantage to control the boys and manipulate them. As evil as he already seems, Jack is known to be the character to experience the most change out of anyone involving the change from civilization to savagery. He begins as an arrogant choirboy, who is actually seen cry when Ralph is elected leader of the island instead of him. Jack's original feelings were to keep an organized group on the island, and also mentions that he is not a savage, and that he will always do the right things. When Ralph brings everyone in the group together, Jack says, "I agree with Ralph. We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are the best at everything. So we've got to do the right
In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of young British boys are left stranded on an island after a fatal plane crash in the midst of a World War. With no communication to the outer world and no presence or influence of adults on the island, Ralph, Jack Merridew, and Piggy are forced to take initiative if the group of hopeless boys want to survive. The group of boys experience a drastic change throughout their time on the island, a change that no one would ever expect to occur to a young group of primed British boys. The leader of the stranded choirists on the island, Jack Merridew, shows such a change that he soon persuades other boys to follow his savage actions as the novel progresses. Though the changes to Jack’s mental and physical characteristics advance slowly at first, the final personality of Jack is instantly taken over at the climax of the novel to a dehumanized savage. Jack’s innocence is corrupted by his inability to withstand a society without rules proving man's good essential nature is altered by the evil within society.
Jack- Jack is kind of an antagonist in the Lord of the Flies. He is a mean and savage boy who only cares for himself and no one else. Jack is the type of person who enjoys rebelling other people for what they think and likes to insult people for who they are. Things tend to get out of hand, ever since Ralph and the boys met Jack. For example, Jack divided the hunters and created his own tribe and becomes enemies with Ralph’s tribe.
Throughout the novel of Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the way Jack is described changes. Not only how other characters view him but also the way he is described throughout the book. At his first appearance he is described as tall thin and bony with red hair, that his face is ugly and freckled. His blue eyes looked like they were ready to turn into anger. The other characters progressively start to see him as evil and violent as he craves to become leader over Ralph. His main conflict is believing that he deserves to be in charge and Ralph does not. Killing turns into a nature although he struggled at the beginning. Jack becomes viewed as an animal as he becomes so obsessed with being leader, when he struggles to kill the pig it shows his true humanity.
In the first chapter of Lord of the Flies, the boys on the island choose a leader. As they decide between Ralph the Athletic sporty kind of kid and Jack the Stuck up rich choir kid, they choose Ralph. Jack is enraged by this choice by the boys. So he is set off onto the path he takes during the whole story by this decision. Jack already has his group behind him he just needs more power. The way he decides to gain this power is a terrible choice. The way he decides to take control is to strike fear into the littluns. One of Jack boys,
The characterization of Jerry illustrates the stages of maturing and becoming independent. In the beginning of the story, Jerry is depicted as young and immature. The immaturity of Jerry is shown when he is trying to capture the older boys’ attention. In order to capture their attention, “he began splashing and kicking in the water like a foolish dog.” This action conveys that Jerry is still immature, and wants to join the older kids. After seeing the boys pass through the tunnel, Jerry also wants to pass through in order to be a part of their group. In order
William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies focuses mainly on a group of boys’ who have been stranded on an uninhabited island where they face many problems with themselves and others. One of the many dilemma’s within this story was the division of power between Ralph and Jack. They both had qualities of a leader, but they had different intentions with where they wanted to go; Jack was primarily the villain in this story showing savagery, while Ralph was civilized. So, why do the boys’ join someone who is cruel? Jack knows that he can manipulate their fears and use activities that are relatable to them because they are still little kids. Although it might seem devious, Jack is intelligent by using these tactics because they prove to be
It is no secret that Lord of The Flies by William Golding is a complex book .There are countless areas in the book meant to symbolize human society due in part to Golding’s participation and horrific experiences in World War II .All of the characters from the book undoubtedly depict different aspects of human nature however, this is most evident in the character Jack Merridew . Jack is above all , a bully . He clearly portrays the theme of Power vs Powerlessness , however whether Jack has the power or not depends on which character he is interacting with. For example when Jack interacts with less mighty characters such as SamnEric and Piggy , he uses his intimidation and bully behavior to make them afraid of him.
Imagine your stuck on a stranded island and having no idea how you get there. Then, you meet these group of boys and have no clue were they come from. So, one of the boys is the chief and the another boy was over the hunters but was also mad he couldn’t be chief. After that everything started off good until the hatred one was angry because he didn't like the way the chief set things, which lead them to fight and have war. Good or Evil?
Throughout the novel Lord of the Flies, Ralph tries his best to create a society based on survival. As time progresses, it is clear that Jack's feelings are towards living life and having fun. Jack's society eventually leads to corruption, killing innocent people, while Ralph's prevails as the boys are rescued. Ralph uses a repetition of hope towards being saved while Jack's technique with no thought clearly flounders creating savages out of the once civilized boys.
Jack is the main antagonist in the novel “Lord of the Flies”. Jack is represented as the opposite of the book’s main protagonist, Ralph. Jack is described as “ tall, thin, and bony; his hair was red beneath the black cap. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness. Out of this face stared tto light blue eyes, frustrated now, and turning, or ready to turn, to anger’’ (pg.25).
In a crowded city such as Manhattan, it was no wonder that a man like Jerry felt lonely. He was without a friend, a mother and father, and the typical 'wife, two children, and a dog,'; that many others had. Jerry was thrown in a world that he felt did not want him, and his human flaw of wanting to escape loneliness led to his tragic death. In Edward Albee's play, The Zoo Story, all Jerry wanted was to be heard and understood, and in the end, after sharing his life story with a complete stranger, he got his final wish - death. The Zoo Story not only tells of the alienation of man in modern society, but also reflects the philosophy of twentieth century existentialism.