The Savage Within Stranded on an island with complete strangers. What would you do? Attempt to restore order and rebuild civilization or tap into your natural human instincts and hunt? In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, this fight between civilization and savagery play out. For most boys, they attempt to remain civil, but for Jack Merridew, the antagonist, this decision is simple. Jack hunts and kills anything in his path. Whether it be a pig or human. In Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Jack descent to savagery is tracked to display man is inherently savage. 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. …show more content…
Golding states, “‘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. The opaque, mad look came into his eyes again.” (53). Jack has begun to think rescue as an afterthought and his main focus has become hunting. Jack stumbles on his words when asked about rescue because he wants to “play” and have “fun”. According to Jack fun is sticking a spear up a sow’s ass or beating a littlun. Jack paints his face as if he’s playing some type of game and his new mask represents a new persona. Golding states, “Jack planned his new face. ‘He made one cheek and eye-socket white, then he rubbed red over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal across from right eat to left jaw. He looked in the pool for his reflection but his breathing troubled the mirror.’” (63). Even Jack can longer recognize himself. He sees a stranger. Jack dawns the face paint and long hair to resemble a savage, but eventually he begins to act like a savage. The paint allows Jack to be himself and release his pent up aggressions and impulses. The first true example of the new savage Jack is with the death of Simon. Golding states, “‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!’” (152). Jack and hunters usually repeat this chant after killing a pig, but this time it was important because they did this …show more content…
Jack has killed before and he has no problem with killing again. Golding states, “‘See? See? That's what you'll get! I meant that! There isn't a tribe for you anymore! The conch is gone-’” (181). Showing his lack of remorse of Piggy, Jack makes fun of Piggy’s death. Jack is truly a sadistic human being. Jack is the devil in a 12-year old's body. He uses the death of Piggy as a statement of what could happen to you if you disobey his rule. The deaths of Simon and Piggy were not enough for Jack he needed more blood to be shed. Golding states, “Viciously with full intention, he hurled his spear at Ralph...”(pg 181). In a spat of rage, Jack attempts to murder Ralph. Jack’s goal of complete savagery overcomes him and attempts to kill the last ounce of humanity on the island. Ralph is the only boys chance of rescue and the last remaining symbol of civilization. The problem is Jack does not want to be rescued or restore civilization. Jack loves being dirty and wild. He was not a peace until he painted his face. The island allows Jack to reveal his true character: A bloodthirsty savage. In Jack’s efforts to find Ralph, he sets the island on fire. Not only is Jack risking the lives of his hunters he risking his own life. Jack is willing to sacrifice his life in order to take Ralph’s life. Jack thirst for blood has clouded his judgment and he can no longer think straight. Jack lives for anarchy and
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 shows that savagery is like an illness and only gets worse over time. After Jack kills the first pig, he proudly says, “’I cut the pig’s throat’” (Golding 69). In this quote, Jack is proud of killing a defenseless sow; this proves that by nature humans are savage because a young, innocent child like Jack killed a mother pig who was nursing her young. Without a real man to look up to, Jack thought being a man meant acting as though he was tough and killing everything he saw. This is a mindset of a savage person. In addition to this scene, Jack leads the charge that killed Simon. This also proves that humans are savage by nature because Jack had no
“There are too many people, and too few human beings.” (Robert Zend) Even though there are many people on this planet, there are very few civilized people. Most of them are naturally savaged. In the book, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, boys are stranded on an island far away, with no connections to the adult world. These children, having no rules, or civilization, have their true nature exposed. Not surprisingly, these children’s nature happens to be savagery. Savagery can clearly be identified in humans when there are no rules, when the right situation arouses, and finally when there is no civilization around us.
The boys are forced to blindly trust Jack. It is in human nature to either lead or to follow and Jack refuses to do the latter. Although the boys follow Jack throughout
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
(Golding 33). Being stranded on the island has majorly changed Jack, he is praised for killing pigs because of it supply of meat. The amount of praise and the feeling of victory after a kill has caused Jack to go mad. The society within the island has corrupted Jack and many of his hunters because they are praised so greatly for killing a pig that they have now adapted this hunting as an evil game, the hunts are no longer for food but instead for self pride, and praise, and power.
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
Jack originally has no intention of coming onto the island to kill and cannot bring himself to kill living things because he still has a connection to his previous life. As they look at the choir, “The boy who controlled them was dressed in the same way though his cap badge
The struggle between humanity and savagery portrayed through the events of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies demonstrates how simple it is for one to succumb to the mannerisms of depravity. This is impossible with the implementation of structure and order, as such concepts provide boundaries and keep man sane and behaved. Once the boys arrive on the island, isolated and expelled from society, they look to a shell to relieve them of this hardship, and to institute a form of government that will keep them from acting out. Despite the trust they put in the shell, it fails to hold them from corruption, only adding to the growing tension between all of the boys inhabiting the mysterious island. Through the escalating tension surrounding the
In many parts of the world, humans live in a civilized society where law and order are organized and enforced. But within a lawless society, savagery surfaces in an ungoverned setting of bloodshed and harm. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Civility and Savagery are differentiated with Ralph and Jack, Ralph establishes a community compared to Jack who damage and divide civilization. Because of how Jack and Ralph use their democratic and dictatorial authority, through the examples of the declined civilization, the increase of savagery and the different ways of power by Ralph and Jack.
Men, without rules, can be led towards destruction. Lord of the Flies depicts at first a group of boys trying to maintain order, and a later descent into savagery. One of the most direct, apparent examples of this is through Roger. Through the contrast of the self-restraint Roger has at the beginning of the novel and the murder he absentmindedly commits at the end, Golding illustrates how man’s desire for savagery is restrained only by the enforced civilization of society.
Civilization was created to contain social structure. However, in utmost circumstances, it is possible for instinct to triumph over civility. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is a plane evacuating a group of British schoolboys that crashes over a tropical deserted island. Once they crash on the island, they pick Ralph, the protagonist of the novel, to be their leader, and Ralph chooses Jack, the antagonist of the novel, to be the leader of the hunters, establishing somewhat of a civilization. Then when Jack comes upon a mother boar and kills it, that’s when their makeshift civilization slowly diminishes and the boys become savages. In addition, loss of social structure within a society can lead to the absolute destruction of the civilization. The author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding, uses man vs man and man vs nature conflicts to develop the theme of loss of social structure leads to savagery. Golding reveals this theme by exploring the conflicts of
Changed by the Season People seem to naturally be selfish which leads them to resort to savagery. The conscience that everyone has, gives them a sense of insecurity wanting to overpower one another and causing violence. William Golding doesn’t just put the scenes of violence for no reason, he portrays this to show us that eventually human nature shapes society. In the Lord of the Flies, the boys’ human nature is shaped by fear and savagery, which causes them to become violent while attempting to maintain a civilization on the island.
Mary Shelley once said in her novel Frankenstein, "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.", this describes how savage choices may not seem savage when they are made. In Lord of the flies, by William Golding, the main characters start off civilly immediately after they crash on a deserted island, then become savage slowly, then all at once when there are no rules to govern right and wrong. William Golding uses the change in the boy's hair to show that savagery overcomes civility when people are influenced by a lengthy period of time without structure. Throughout Lord of the Flies the boys appearances are more important when they act civilly than when they turn to savagery.
Humans have displayed a progressively increasing sense of order and civilization, albeit sometimes overshadowed by a primitive sense of savagery. In William Golding’s novel, The Lord of the Flies, the theory that an inherent savagery is present within mankind is explored through the experiences of young boys left to fend for themselves on an isolated island. The deterioration of order and rationality ensues and the boys become increasingly differentiated, showing the reader the two facets of a person’s nature. While some people prefer to observe human nature on a surface level - determining that it is without flaws and detriments, possessing an instinctual sense of civilization - the unique nature of savagery bears a more primitive premise