Jack Failing To Kill The Pig Character Analysis

“They knew very well why he hadn’t; because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood. (pg 31)

After a few tries, Jack and the hunters finally catch a pig. The boys and Jack brutally attack it and kill it. This is the first step of Jack's decent to primitive savagery. We see the loss of innocence because Jack has killed his first living creature, and also had a loss of innocence sexually. Now we see Jack become very confident in his hunting ability and we start to see him act more like a hunter. He now wears a mask over his face and always wants to hunt. The author has this to say about Jack and his mask, "the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness" (62).  With the aid of the mask, Jack is now transforming into a different person. He seems to be happier as a hunter. The author also lets us into Jack's mind, for his thoughts on his first kill, "His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink" (70).

Being at the top of the pyramid, Jack is more inclined to be a leader. By killing the pig, Jack satisfied a need for himself and can now help others appease their own

By the end of the novel, it was apparent that the boys on the island had changed completely from the innocent school boys they were to killer savages. Although the boys did not start off as killers, life on the island transformed them into this beast. As we see with Jack, the first time he went hunting, he failed to kill the pig, but now he has been obsessed with making it his goal. This was a turning point in Jack because it starts his transformation into this savage killer in which he knows when the novel goes onto to speak about how, “He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up”(Golding 51). The whole idea of failing to kill the pig is just frustrating to him to the point where he is set on doing it.

Jack is described as having a “crumpled and freckled...face” that was “ugly without silliness”,(Golding 20). This shows to the reader that this character already is a boy with hardly any sense of joy. He arrives on the island leading a group of choir boys, and he feels that since he was the leader there he should be the leader for the rest of the boys on the island as well. Although Jack wishes to be the leader of the boys he finds that one of the only ways to win their approval is by proving himself worthy. So he goes out to try to kill a pig, but when the chance presents itself he finds he is not able to. For when he raised his arm in the air” he “[paused] only long enough/to understand what an enormity the downward stroke would be”(Golding 31). Ever since the moment that Jack was unable to kill his first pig the reader sees how even though he wanted to with most of himself he did not have a distinct killer instinct. Yet as the book continues it becomes prominent that Jack wishes to kill the pig as a way of proving that “their would be no mercy”(Golding 31). Unlike Roger, Jack feels alienated by the act of killing anything as himself, so he decides to paint his face so he may “ hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness” in a freeing kind of way “the mask compelled them”(Golding 64). From the moment that Jack put the mask on he was no longer a boy but now a savage waiting for his next kill. Though Jack and Roger are both antagonists to the book they are different in the reasons behind their kills and violence. While Roger does it to inflict pain, Jack does it with the hope of achieving a sort of dominance and twisted respect from the other boys on the island. Once Jack realized that killing a pig was not as hard as he originally thought, and sees how much respect the boys all had for him after a kill he had no problem with killing the pig;

In the beginning of the novel, Jack is represented as an innocent but controlling school boy, leader of a choir, who thought he should've been the leader because he was the head boy and could sing a C sharp, but that was put to the test, Jack was too scared to kill a pig, he restrained by social and moral barriers. As the book goes on, Jack has another chance to kill a pig, but he thinks a better way of hunting the pig was to camouflage within the nature, so he has the idea of painting his body with with clay ‘war paint’. The Mask. It symbolises the turn from civilised to

The pig ran away and made an awful noise-It turned back and ran into the circle, bleeding-We closed in-I cut the pig's throat-"(pg.75). As seen from this quote, Jack kills the pig in a merciless way by slicing the pigs throat. His way of killing the pig goes to show that Jack has started to lose his morality and has leaned more toward a savage mentality. Jack's civility eventually goes away as the book progress and is due to the lack of proper authority to set rules to not allow Jack to change into what he eventually becomes. Jack is able to get the other boys to be savages by coming up with a dance and chant about killing pigs.

As Jack and the boys prepare to hunt a pig, they smear clay on their faces. They wanted to be able to camouflage from the pig. As Jack puts on the clay paint, he becomes a different person when, “He capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness”

When Jack attempted to kill the sow but missed, all the boys were more logical and innocent. “They knew very well why he hadn't: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood” (Golding 31). They cared about living creatures and they felt bad for trying to kill the pig. When they actually killed the pig, those concerns and feelings of sorrow went away. They no longer cared for the pig's life. All they cared about was that they had food. Hunting became a game for Jack. “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink” (Golding 70). It was something he enjoyed. Since Jack's focus was completely on hunting now, he had lost some logic on how important other priorities were. The obvious proof for their disappearing logic is that the boys attack the mother pig. This means the baby pigs will end up dying off and they will have no meat in the

As the book progresses on the conflict is still there seeing who maintain a better leader of the group. In chapter 4 Jack has had no success hunting the pigs he thinks this because they can see him, not smell him. He then had an idea to paint his face when Golding says, “...then he [rubs] red over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw...the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.”(Golding 63) Jack painting his face with clay and dirt masks his identity from the others. When he is disguised he does not have to take account for his actions. When a person wears a mask no one knows who or what they are. Jack abuses his power by doing

However in the first chapter when they saw that pigs inhabited the island, Jack froze. He drew his knife but still did nothing. At this moment, Jack was scared and faced with a huge hit of reality. He was not able bring himself to actually kill another living creature. From then on Jack was determined to kill a pig and prove to the other boys he could and that he was the alpha male, but his determination leads him straight on the path of becoming a true savage.

No longer has he any remorse for killing animals, and hardly the slightest guilt for killing one of his own friends. In fact, hunting and murdering seems to get him on a sort of high that he now craves. He even leads a tribe of his own little savages that do whatever he says as though he rules over them like a dictator. As mentioned earlier, their chant, “Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!” has become a sort of evil and cruel game in which they enjoy pretending to murder living creatures for their own amusement. The sick and twisted mindset Jack possessed is not only limited to him.

The beginning of the pigs’ evolution starts with the pig being a food source for the boys and, what helps keep them alive. Jack is head strong about proving himself as a leader so, he makes killing the pig a priority for him. Golding shows the importance of the pig to Jack when he states that “there is food...there is everything”(35) at a meeting; bringing up the pig as a main subject in their discussion. The only idea the boys categorize the pig with at this present time in the novel is for food, which displays the importance of the creature at the beginning. Because the boys are not yet familiar with killing, Jack and his hunters have a difficult time bringing back a kill within the first few tries; almost as if they are already fearing

Explanation: Jack painted on his face for hunting reasons, but soon realized that he could hide himself behind the mask and show his desire for

Towards the beginning of the novel, face paint is utilized by Jack to hide his identity while hunting. Never having killed a pig, Jack believes that wearing the face paint, he will be able to get closer to a pig and complete the kill. Therefore,he will provide meat for the boys. “For