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How Is Jack Presented In Lord Of The Flies

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The Character of Roger is portrayed in the book as one of the antagonists, but not main one as is Jack is. When the reader is first introduced to Roger he is described as a boy with “black hair...[that] seemed to suit his gloomy face and made what seemed” to be “an unsociable remoteness” now look like a boy full of “forbidding”(Golding 60). This first moment of meeting Roger shows the reader that this character will not be the savior, but rather one of the causes of destruction. Not only is it shown in Rogers appearance that he is one of the villains, but after being on the Island without authority for a short period of time it comes to light that he has a darker side when he is shown to be intentionally trying to hurt one of the boys; “Roger …show more content…

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;

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