How Does Jack Merridew Present The Theme Of Savagery In Lord Of The Flies

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.

Jack transforms from a proper, orderly schoolboy to a violent savage. The transformation does not happen immediately when Jack lands on the island, but eventually, as he discovers he loves to inhumanely hunt. One crucial moment of Jack's descent into savagery occurs when he paints his face for the first time, “He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger.” (Golding 63). He is anonymous. He doesn’t recognize it as himself; being in a group makes some people lose touch with their personal moral beliefs, and his face is covered so that a stranger would not be able to tell if a bunch of the young boys were together they could most likely not be able to identify them because of their facepaints. That made Jack feel

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).

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

Humans savagely turn against each other when they feel it would better them. One could say that there is no hope for humankind and that evil is an inborn trait of people, and in the novel, these two things go hand in hand together. In the Lord of the Flies, it portrays these ideas very well because it shows and explains how British school boys turn to savages because of the island.The boys’ shift to savagery was not gradual and this change in tone allowed many to come to a realization.

The significance of the character Jack, was thought provoking to the reader, due to his influential change throughout Lord of the Flies. In the beginning of the novel, Jack turned out to be a civilised, organised and authoritative school boy. However, as time went on and many things changed, Jack slowly succumbed to his true, primitive nature. Once Jack was given the role of Chief Hunter, and was able to kill his first pig, he hesitated and realised “the enormity of the downward strike would be”. As a result of this, Jack didn’t attempt to kill the pig, which shows us his underlying innocence. The longer Jack was stuck on the island, the more his inner savagery began to reveal itself to the audience. This in turn caused him to start trying to “convey the compulsion to track down and kill what was swallowing him up”. This drastic change in character reveals to the audience how influential the expectations of society can impact on human nature. Human nature at its purest form is the primitive, savage part of everyone, which is hidden by the rules of society we must follow to survive in a modern civilisation. Society is a person’s biggest influence. Once a young child like Jack is removed

In the beginning, there was one tribe led by their elected leader Ralph. When Jack and Ralph have different opinions on what is most important about survival, two different, yet similar tribes emerge from the existing one. Both of the tribes have different characteristics, different jobs they perform on a daily basis, and different leaders who have separate views and opinions. Though they differ in more ways than one, both tribes share at least one thing in common, both are eager to be rescued, and willing to do most anything to survive.

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.

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,

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was right in saying that the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Jack Merridew’s evil ways are evident as he uses fear to control the boys on the island. In the beginning of the book, his presence itself at the election of chief instills the first of the fears within each of the boys. Jack uses his personality as a menace to the boys on the island. Although Jack garners support from the majority of the group, they assist him only through fear of what he is capable of doing to them if they do not do as he commands. As one can see multiple times throughout the book, Jack deems it necessary to hunt down pigs on the island, but why? Jack carries a demon inside of him that allows him to do such acts. If things are not done as he wishes, his fury is unleashed on everyone around him. While the others find hunting as a chance for adventure, Jack practices it as if it were a ritual. This ritual extends beyond the pig caught between the “creepers”; pigs are eventually replaced with human flesh. The boys’ fear keep them in the circle of dancing for they are afraid that one of them will be the next in the center of the dance. This outlook on violence is what drives the fear inside them. Later on, Jack uses the belief of the beast to further enlarge the terror of the schoolboys. The idea of the beast was originally brought up by a “littlun” but Jack uses the little boy’s fear to his advantage. The sacrifices made, the spears, and the face

Jack Merridew is presented as the indifferent, older character of the novel. He is the antagonist and could be seen as a devil figure in the story. Jack is the hunter, the dictator and, throughout the story, is at constant battle with Ralph for his leadership. Jack wants to be in control of the island and the kids but the type of leadership that he offers is brutal and similar to that of a dictatorship and communism. Jack also believes that the group should have fun and stuff oneself with the food they hunt. He is not very concerned with the future of being rescued. On the other hand, Ralph wants order and work and is much more concern with being rescued.

though Jack does not want to be seen as a child, but as a figure of

Throughout history, leaders, both good and evil, have thrived by earning the support of the people they rule over. In the novel The Lord of the Flies, this is portrayed through how Jack governs over the other boys. Jack is a ruthless leader who has no mercy for those who dislike his ways. He also leads to cause a change on the island, one that focuses on hunting instead of fire making and shelter building. Jack also gives the other boys more freedom to do as they please, unlike Ralph, who was very strict in telling the others to stay on task.

Jack is the first character to don body paint, giving into the temptation of setting the inner beast free. During the duration of Jack's juncture on the island, his grip on society’s rules fades away, and he gives into the desire of acting on every impulse. Before wearing a mask, Roger sees Jack in the distance in a very different light: “When Roger opened his eyes and saw him, a darker shadow crept beneath the swarthiness of his skin; but Jack noticed nothing” (Golding 62). Underneath

Jack Merridew is the main antagonist in the novel and he is the leader of the hunters. He has got red hair and blue & angry eyes. Jack is described as a tall, thin and bony boy, but he is charismatic, ugly, proud, wild, cruel, selfish, aggressive and arrogant. He was the head boy at his school and now he wants to be braver than all the other boys on the island, thus he forms his own tribe and commands a group of hunters. The best friend of him is Roger.