What Does Facepaint Mean

When Jack’s side obtains more members, they go hunting and kill a pig, brutally. Jack begins thinking that the act of hunting and killing animals is his entertainment now. Golding describes how Jack giggled and rubbed pig innards all over Maurice’s face, right after they killed the sow. Jack then orders the kids to mount the pigs head onto a stick, and says, “The head is for the beast. It’s a gift” (Golding 137). This is false idolization and similar to ancient tribes who sacrificed animals and other people to their gods, which is extremely uncivilized now. Jack is doing whatever he pleases, empowered by the mask and the children who follow him now, along with the lack of consequence for anything he does. He has completely descended into savagery almost all on his own, and will drag his tribe down with him. The

Later, Jack and his hunters display another example of human evil with the gruesome slaughtering of a pig. They don’t just stab it to death and get it over with, but carry on deranged acts like taking a stick sharpened at both ends, with one side in the ground and the other for the pig to be impaled on. They take joy in the blood of the pig and show odd sexual hunger when they sodomize the pig with a stick.

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 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

He has found a love for the joy that comes in hunting animals, and he will stop anything or anyone that comes in his way. In “Painted Faces and Long Hair,” Jack finds some clay and smears it on his face. He then says “For hunting. Like in the war. You know- dazzle paint. Like things trying to look like something else.” (Golding63) The paint symbolizes the boys becoming new people. When Jack wears the face paint, he is not “Jack” anymore. His true identity is disguised, and this allows him to do what he wants without the repercussions. The mask symbolizes the savageness within Jack because after he applies the face paint he “began to dance and his laughter, became a blood thirsty snarling.” (Golding64) It also “ liberated from shame and self-consciousness” (Golding64), showing that he can do anything without feeling as bad about it. Before, the kids would feel guilt from some of their actions because of lessons from their old lives that are caved in the back of their minds. The mask is a way for them to feel guiltless. The other boys are a little scared for good reason, and even Bill runs away from him. Jack insists on everyone helping him with his pig hunting mission, and finally they all agree, because the “mask compelled them.” (Golding64) The mask makes Jack more powerful, and scarier because it truly brings out his viscous side. The face paint symbolizes the

The ego he sets into place is his plan to hunt the pigs with a certain strategy. Jack first decides to use face paint for camouflage among the forest while he hunts. “For hunting. Like in the war. You know—dazzle paint. Like things trying to look like something else—” [Jack] twisted in the urgency of telling. “—Like moths on a tree trunk” (Golding 63). Jack explains his strategy of face paint to Roger, as he adds on to his ideal plan of satisfying his id. Before the actual kill does take place, Jack continues to use effective strategies to gain food. “Look! We’ve killed a pig—we stole up on them—we got in a circle—” (Golding 69). Jack also adds to his perfect plan by creeping up on the pig, silently, then surrounding it in a circle with no chance of escape. These tactics are what brings Jack to eventually satisfy his id, the first step being to achieve meat. The ego that Jack creates is only the second part of the Division of the Mind, but Jack does think thoroughly for his basic needs.

Consequently, he uses the need of meat to rationalize his savage behavior, although there is an abundance of fresh fruit. The need for this excuse is obviated when Jack starts to apply a mask of paint in order to liberate himself from "shame and self-consciousness" (64). Moreover, this self-deception enables him to become an "awesome stranger" (63), capable of wholly abandoning any sense of morality or ethics.

… The madness came into his eyes again. ‘I thought I might kill.’”(Golding, page 51). If Jack were hunting exclusively for the purpose of food, his inner “compulsion to kill” as stated by the author would not exist to begin with. In fact, this statement appears to suggest the opposite—that his inner compulsion to kill is some kind of inner need rather than just an innocent venture to acquire food for the rest of the boys. Therefore, due to the wording of the author from the quote on page 51 as an addition to the quote on page 31 (which can be surmised as foreshadowing of evil) it provides the basis of Jack’s hunting proving him a symbol of evil. From page 134 onwards, this relationship is further solidified by the following few quotes: “A little apart from the rest, sunk in deep maternal bliss, lay the largest sow of the lot. She was black and pink, and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a row of piglets…” (page 134), “She blundered into a tree… could follow her easily by the vivid drops of blood. …and the hunters followed… excited by the long chase and the dropped blood.”(page 135), and “Jack held up the head and jammed the soft throat with the pointed end which pierced through into the mouth (Golding, page 136 and 137). The first detail on page 134 indicates the pig they have their sights on is a mother of a few piglets. Quite

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

The war paint symbolizes the inner freedom of the savage boys. When Jack puts camouflage paint on his face, he reveals a different side of him. Jack’s laugh “be[comes] a bloodthirsty snarling” which displays how he is like an animal as animals, or even beasts, thirst for blood. This is his inner freedom, in other words, revealing the actions and behavior he really wants to

The loss of innocence began once the hunters commenced to use clay to paint their faces and bodies. This was for the purpose of camouflage for hunting wild swine within the confines of the forest yet it had a much more sinister side effect. The paint “was a thing of its own, behind which [the wearer] hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness,” (Golding 75-76) which unlike a mask, uncovered the boys’ horrible savagery. Like tribal paint, it revealed the dying innocence yet blooming barbaric nature of Jack and his hunters which would spread to the remaining boys, except for a few such as Ralph. Ralph also saw the adolescent boys’ revealing nature as well such as the time when Jack and some of his fellow savages stole fire as “demoniac figures with faces of white and red and green” (Golding

He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger… He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling… Jack rushed towards the twins. ‘The rest are making a line. Come on!’ ‘But-’ ‘-we-’ ‘Come on! I’ll creep up and stab-’ The mask compelled them” (63-64). When Jack first arrived on the island he wore his black choir cloak and refused to take it off even in the sweltering heat. He repeatedly referenced his abilities in choir as reasoning for him to become chief. As time on the island increased, however, he lost his choir uniform and the rules that came along with it. Consequently, Jack painting on the mask represents him fully becoming a ‘savage’ and leaving whatever civilization that was ingrained in him behind. This enables him to become an entirely different person with different morals as “no longer at himself but at an awesome strange” demonstrates. The first things he does as a “new” person is dance and laugh maniacally, and then excitedly talk about stabbing another living

The first reason that human nature is best represented by Jack’s character is because people tend to make decisions based on their emotions when they are anonymous or alone. Jack let his true feelings show when his face was painted and when he was hunting in the forest. Once he was disguised or in the privacy of the forest, he acted like a wild animal. The author describes Jack as being a different person when he paints his face. The narrator says, “[h]e capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness” (Golding 60). This mask acted as a shield protecting Jack from the judgement of others. It made him feel less responsible for his actions, and he disregarded intellect and practicality while choosing his course of action. Instead, he relied on his emotions to make decisions, no matter how bad they were, because the mask took away his sense of responsibility. Many people are like this today. For example, when people robs a bank, they wear masks to make sure no one recognizes them. In some ways, a

Their masks hide the evil dwelling within their innocent souls, waiting to be set free. It emits human personalities and behaviors, allowing it to be impenetrable by visual perception. With these masks as a cover, Jack and his tribe members interact nicely; chaos rips through their society when they allowed their masks to fall off throughout many sequences of events.