Jack's Hunger for Power in The Lord of the Flies Essay

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

Though only a year or two has passed, it is plausible. Jack uses everything he has learned in the war to help his town thrive. Not knowing the real Jack, created a positive view of the imposter Jack. The imposter Jack's "change" of heart, became his weakness.

Have you ever thought of what could happen to a human when he/she survives on a deserted island? Jack has changed character over the course of the novel. Emotionally, physically, and psychologically due to the conflicts throughout the novel, Lord of the Flies. Jack has changed from being innocent to a savage through his needs for survival.

This shows the evil and rebellious personality that Jack has. This is what makes him a ruler of unfair ways of ruling. The conflict on the island begins with Jack trying dominant the group rather than work with Ralph. He frequently challenges the power of the conch, declaring that the conch rule does not matter on certain parts of the island. “We don’t need the conch anymore.

In spite of not having adult supervision, Jack’s behavior towards being a savage happened quickly. Jack acquired savagery when he stepped upon the island with his choir, Ralph noticed that Jack “controlled them…” (Golding 19). This reveals how Jack’s

As Jack begins to discard elements of his choirboy uniform, so too does he discard bits of his humanity. Eventually, the boy's once pale complexion becomes hidden by the war paint typical of a primitive human living outside the reaches of civilization. Hidden by this mask, Jack Merridew ceases to be the cooperative young man who had seemed eager to keep the traditions of civilization on the island. Instead, he transforms into a young savage bent upon killing and taking power. The first very obvious display of this attitude occurs when Jack neglects the signal fire he had pledged to keep-and even ordering some of the other boys to do the same- in order to build a more effective hunting party. When the victorious hunters arrive with their prize, they are not hailed as heroes, but instead berated like children. Although he seems to shrink from Ralph's obvious anger, Jack is still proud of his accomplishment and even tries to dictate who will and won't share in the first truly satisfying meal the boys have while on the island. After his victory in hunting, it would appear that Jack is no longer content to be second to anyone. He asserts that, as the only one to have provided meat for the tribe, he should be the leader. After multiple accusations and angry outbursts, Jack finally breaks away and forms his own tribe on the other side of the island. This tribe is not focused on clinging

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;

Jack isn’t necessarily bad to start out, in fact, none of the boys are, but survival is key. At first, it seems that Jack is for the good of the group and wants to restore civilization.

This is when we first saw Jack stepping up to become more of a leader on the island, he wanted to take a position that had power. As the novel progressed Jack started to become more animal-like, and this is when the island started to face hardships. Jack wanted to become a sole leader on the island, he wanted to hold all of the power on the island because he thought that he knew best. This is when the island went into chaos, he split the island up into two different tribes, and his tribe's main focus was on hunting. Jack’s savagery showed more and more, which caused the island to go into chaos.

One of the main conflicts in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is the power struggle between Ralph’s egalitarianism and Jack’s authoritarianism. By the end of the story, their power struggle ends with Jack leading all the other boys on the island against Ralph, who has no allies or followers left. Due to this conclusion, it is evident that there were several shortcomings in the effectiveness of Ralph’s leadership, and many strengths in Jack’s. I believe that in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Jack repeatedly proved that he was a far more effective leader than Ralph. He was able to convince all the boys to join his tribe, and he came to have more power over them than Ralph ever did. This was due to Jack’s superior ability to understand

Jack's transformation from British school boy to savagery little by little and lost social control.

Jack's personality shifts from being a choir boy to a hunter and savage. Jack becomes known for his expertise and heroic acts, he is able to take the savagery to the

Also, Jack forgets about the fire and rescue and this prolongs their stay on the island. This goes to show that the lack of adult authority trumps Jack's previous morals of caring for others. The best thing for the boys is to get back to civilization, but Jack takes that away from them when he allows external forces to control and change his character. In addition, Jack wants to have rules in order to keep them all in line. “ 'We'll have rules!'

By the end of the novel we can see that jack has turned into the evil person that he had always naturally been, it just took a misfortunate situation to bring it out of him. He loses the innocent young boy and becomes this immoral savage character with no empathy or remorse towards anybody. Jack had evolved to being chief of the boy’s, and used their fear of the beast and the unknown to control them, and make them complete tasks that involved the use of violence. He uses his power over the boy’s to get back at the Ralph

The most vivid scene to me, occurs when Jack begins to battle with his inner demons. He begins by saying, “I WAS a liar. Even though I lived in a place where everyone knew who I was, I couldn’t help but try to introduce new versions of myself as my interests changed, and as other versions failed to persuade. I was also a thief,” he admits to the readers (Wolff 133).