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.
When Jack was in that survival situation, his emotions shifted. In the times when he was in a life threatening situation, he disregard other people and do believes what he thinks is the best. “We want meat” and “We need shelters. Suddenly Jack shouted in rage” (Golding 71). Jack dissents from piggy and he feels like his authority and power is being threatened. In this situation, Jack confronts Piggy and
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“They don’t smell me. They see me, I think.” (Golding 88). This shows Jack’s obsession with hunting and even going as far as masking his face to camouflage with the environment. Moreover it shows a good representation of humans adaptive to their environment, both physically and psychologically. When jack was on the island, he turned blood thirsty. He suddenly had an obsession to kill pigs. At the beginning of the novel, Jack hesitated to kill the pig because he never killed an animal before. Which lead the pig to escape. “...Jack drew his knife again with a flourish. He raised his arm in the air. There came a pause, a hiatus…”. Because of the hesitation and letting the pig slip away, Ralph was embarrassed and felt impotent. To sum up, because of Jack’s hesitation Jack is becoming more bloodthirsty he promises that the next time he sees a pig he will kill it. No mercy.
In conclusion, Jack was a classic example of humans being in a life threating survival situation and his actions and thoughts showed. For example his failure of not being able to kill the pig to being painting his face to blend in. These events is an sample of how in such a short amount of time humans could turn from a civil person to savage
In chapter 4, Jack creates a strategic method to successfully hunt down the pig. This desire to kill the pig has distracted and prevented Jack from following Ralph’s orders. “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”
In the book, the readers can tell that Jack only cares about savagery and hunting pigs. Jack feels that he can replace Ralph as leader, because Ralph does not take much of responsibility. He falls into the savagery category because when he puts on the mask to kill the pigs, it hides his inner inhibitions. “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”(pg. 69). This quote shows Jack’s evil side when it comes to the death of their first pig, and it is also a political allegory. “The conch doesn’t count on the top of the mountain… so you shut up.”(pg. 42) Jack feels like he is a dictator, so he decides to take control of Piggy. “You should have seen the blood!”(pg. 70). This shows Jack’s loss of innocence, and the savagery inside him and the
Jack foreshadows his eventual savagery in the beginning when he was still part of Ralph’s tribe. However, because Ralph was chief Jack was forced to obey him. When he was still with Ralph, Jack did not focus on being rescued. Instead he would rather take advantage of the fact that they don’t have adults on the island and used violence by hunting pigs. This caused Ralph and Jack to fight and during one of their disagreements, Jack shouts to Ralph, “‘Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong-- we hunt. If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat’” (Golding 91). Jack’s desire to hunt is shown when he forgets what his priorities are and says, “‘Bollocks to the rules!’” Both Ralph and Jack have different priorities on the island. Ralph’s focus is on the fire signal so that they could be rescued, however, Jack just wants to hunt for the thrill of it. When Jack kept repeating, “beat and beat and beat” it emphasized his thirst for killing. This crave for violence Jack has shows that he is headed towards savagery. Jack’s mutiny of hunters against Ralph also demonstrates that humans have a dark side of them. When Jack finally left Ralph’s tribe he let go of the last piece of civilization he had and turned into a violent and selfish person. He allowed his savage thoughts to take over his actions. Jack shows that he is no longer innocent when he, “Viciously, with full intention, he hurled his spear at Ralph. The pint tore the skin and flesh over Ralph's ribs, then sheared off and fell in the water. Ralph stumbled, feeling not pain but panic, and the tribe, screaming now like the chief, began to advance” (Golding 181). When Jack “with full intention” attempted to kill Ralph he committed a crime that would land him in jail in society. His action show that he had already forgotten about what society has taught him as well as the
Horace once said that, “Force without wisdom falls on its own weight.” Jack Merridew is a boy who who becomes stranded on an inhabited island from six to thirteen years old. They are forced to survive in this environment until they are rescued. Jack Merridew, a character in William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, has changed from the beginning of the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Jack’s behavior and attitude is immature and extremely cocky, while toward the middle, he becomes more animal-like, and towards the end, he is a savage and acting on impulse and emotions. Jack’s behavior throughout the novel takes a drastic turn, but his behavior, after the plane crash, is significant to the novel.
Even though Jack demonstrated his leadership qualities when proposing a rescue plan to the ‘tribe’, and by accepting Ralph’s election to lead the group, something he wanted for himself, he eventually turns into a savage through killing a pig. This incident gives him a sense of power realizing that he can act with impunity without consequences. Wanting to hunt and kill pigs turned into a priority, eliminating the need to be
One of the first steps to savagery is the craving to kill a creature, the enjoyment the person gets from spilling another’s blood. “I was going to, I was choosing a place. Next time- !” (Golding, 29). Jack is referring to killing a pig that they found as they were walking through the jungle. He tells Ralph and Simon that he is going to kill the pig the next time he approaches one. In order to keep his fearless demeanor, Jack was determined to kill the pig to prove it, which pointed Jack to the direction of savagery. Nevertheless, towards the end of the book, Jack and his tribe
In the narrative ‘Lord of the flies’, Jack’s transformation from a normal choirboy into a horrendous and violent savage is evident through his change of appearance and his endeavor in hunting helpless pigs. Jack is introduced in the first chapter as a rather naive and egoistic boy, who is considered among the older grouping of the boys, the biguns. In the early stages of the novel, Golding denotes Jack as an eager responder to Ralph’s authority as he agrees with setting rules that govern the boys conduct. This later changes as Jack reveals some of his innate savage instincts through his yearning endeavor to hunt. Within chapter one, Jack goes on an expedition into the forest along with Ralph and Simon where he encounters a live piglet that is tangled by creepers.
Jack illustrates evil and violence, and is in the hellish side of human nature. A choir leader and head guy and his school, he came on the island having some experience in success, and taking control over others by bossing around the choir with his aggressive attitude. He is always excited to make up his own rules and to punish the boys who break them, but however he constantly breaks the himself when he needs to further his own interests. He also seems to thinks that he has some nerve, even though that he has no idea what he is talking about. “ Ralph is like Piggy.” “He says things like Piggy.” “He isn’t a proper chief.” (50) To Jack intelligence is weak unlike strength, and to him it is not necessary for being chief. Ralph uses inspiring words of reasoning like Piggy does, and according to Jack, Ralph isn’t fit to be the boys leader but Jack is wrong. Jack’s only main interests are hunting, punishing, a strong sickness that starts with the desire for meat, and builds up to the uncontrollable need to master and kill other living things. His hunting has developed savagery that has already made him into a bloodthirsty carnivore, as he prowls through the jungle, just like how Jack and his tribe were killing the pig. “Kill the pig, cut his throat, spill the blood.” (164) We first hear this when Jack and his hunters kill the first pig. This is a really bad situation because Jack leads the group when they chant, he makes them usually say it everytime they kill showing dominate power. “Should have seen the blood!” (31) He says this after they kill the first pig and we see how Jack is not blood thirsty and this event begins rapidly to savagery, that makes him a bad leader and a role model for
After killing Piggy, Jack becomes more confident because they had killed Ralph’s friend. It makes the member of his enemy less of number. It has shown in this part,
The physical appearance of Jack also changes greatly within the novel. Golding portrays Jack’s fixation with hunting to cause this. At the beginning of the novel, his image is described as like the other choirboys, wearing shorts, a shirt and a black cloak, “finished off with a hambone frill”. However, we see that in Chapter three, his physical characteristics have now changed from a choirboy to a hunter. This is shown where it says, “His bare back was a mass of dark freckles and peeling sunburn…he was naked.". His image also becomes
By the end of the novel, Jack has become a full blown barbarian. He is so caught up in killing pigs that he no longer listens to Ralph. He tries to become chief again and fails. Because of that, he starts his own tribe on the other side of the island where all they do is hunt pigs. The boys that follow him are transformed into the savage that he is. “Here, struck down by the heat, the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her…Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch… [t]hen Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands.” Jack and his followers were demoralized and tainted
The conscious state of Jack’s mind, at this point in time, wants to kill for meat, food, and survival. As the pig hunts continue, a growing superiority or evil grows within Jack. Unconsciously, he transitions into an even less civilized being when he repeatedly recalls the amount of bloodshed from the slaughter of the pig. “Jack becomes an externalization of the evil instinctual forces of
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).
Jack is only thinking about killing pigs. Jack is mad at ralph because he is more worried about being rescued . “Jack Flushed We want Meat The Madness came into his eyes again You wouldn't care to help with the shelters, I suppose? We want meat And we don't get it But I shall! Next time! I've got to get a barb on this spear! We wounded a pig and the spear fell but If we could only make barbs ”(51). Jack does not care about rescue anymore he care more about killing a pig. Furthermore “Rescue Yes, of course All the same, I'd like to catch a pig first He snatched up his spear and dashed it into the ground.”(53). Jack has gone mad with hunting and killing a pig. This quote shows that Jack is now starting to not care about being rescued, he just wants
Jack says they will hunt it. This is how Jack’s authoritative figure shows he is a dynamic character in the beginning of the novel.