Think of two twins who are not physically alike but have reflecting and opposite personalities. These two people are shadows of one another and resemble the duality of good vs. evil. These types of counterpart characters are known as doppelgangers. A doppelganger is an alter ego of one's charisma. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, the characters Ralph/Jack and Gene/Finny represent doppelgangers, explaining how they complement each other and maintain supremacy.
One significant pair of characters who separate is Ralph and Jack. Their dual natures cause differences among themselves due to various reasons. From a physical standpoint, Jack is described as “tall, thin, and bony: and his hair was red
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From the beginning, Ralph is elected chief of the boys and his authority is based upon the conch. The conch symbolizes democracy and Ralph’s power. Soon Jack’s jealously and addiction to savagery increased his desire to be chief. During one argument scene, Jack says, "And you shut up! Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people what to do. You can't hunt, you can't sing."(Golding) Jack begins to show character of an evil leader in himself; he blames Ralph for not doing anything productive for everyone. Implying that Jack alters the other boys’’ decisions between right and wrong, he continues to strive for dictatorship using brutal force. Likewise, Ralph stays democratic and gives other boys respect. ”Ralph realistically confronts the problem of survival and works out a practical plan for rescue. Jack is quick to revert to savagery, dishonesty, violence.” (Dickson 12-26) Contrary to Lord of the Flies, A Separate Peace features dominance over friendship. To begin with, Gene leads himself into malevolence towards Finny. “Gene is the persecuting double, bent upon his own selfish will to power and desired annihilation of Finny, while Finny is the beneficent double, through his sacrificial death bringing about hope and spiritual growth for Gene.” (Slethaug 259-270) Gene wants to eliminate Finny from his life and become the best at the Devon School. Gene’s character was approached in an egotistical manner . Another factor which increased control over friendship is
Throughout the history of humanity, humans have different behaviors that change depending on what situations they are in. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo spent many years exploring human nature and has developed many theories about human behavior. One of Zimbardo’s ideas is about situational factors that states “one’s behavior is assumed to be dependent upon their current circumstances, situation or the environment that they are in.” He concluded the concept of situational factors after his Stanford Prison Experiment, in which he gave authority to regular people and observed any changes. The experiment proved that people’s behavior will change when they are in different situations. Zimbardo also believes that evilness is the exercise of power to harm people in anyway possible, so a five year old who teases others to Adolf Hitler would be classified as perpetrators of evil.
When placed in the right situations and circumstances, all human beings are capable of revealing a darker side of them-a side that almost everyone is afraid to show. No one will admit to having a dark side in them, until nature forces them to face it. Lord of the Flies by William Golding and A Separate Peace by John Knowles are two books that emphasize man’s savagery through their characters, themes, and plots. At first, all men have hidden savagery, then something triggers the savagery within them, and they complete the transformation.
Ralph's antithesis in the novel is Jack, the book's antagonist. Jack is uncompromising as well as domineering and represents impulsive savagery and violence; he has a desire and craving for power, which is shown early in the book when he is infuriated that he loses the election of island leader to Ralph. However, Jack soon learns how to become the real leader over all of the boys. He begins by instinctively appealing to their base instincts, becoming more savage and barbaric; he hunts pigs and obsesses over this violence. He eventually learns to control the boys with their fear of the beast. Jack is the quintessential example of one who misuses free will; Jack chooses to use his knowledge and power to bring out the savagery in the little ones. Jack's savage mindset becomes even more power-hungry and violent after he kills his first pig, "His mind was crowded with memories; memories
Jack is the perfect representation of a Tyrant, who uses his power to control his teammates, which always causes a Fray between Ralph and himself. Ralph’s character is the perfect image the boys need to follow since he unlike the others, avoids playtime to
The boys had no rules, some even had no mercy. The next challenging thing that Ralph had to face is that having an main antagonist against the whole time, that being Jack. From the beginning he was the head of the choir and was wanting to be the leader and Chief of all the boys. 19 “ I ought to be Chief, because I’m chapter chorister and head boy.”
Ralph represents the calm, civilized world, while Jack represents the inner animal in each and every person. We must try to keep to our inner Ralph and not give into our Jack. We must be kind and compassionate to others and think carefully about our words and thoughts before taking action. Throughout the many adventures that Jack and Ralph experience, we learn a lot about the people they really are, as well as the personalities that they exhibit, and are able to extract important lessons which can be applied to better ourselves and our
In the novel, the boys always fought, argued, and disobeyed one another. They had difficulty deciding on a leader because more than one person had a strong leadership personality; however, Jack’s aggressive attitude eventually wins out over Ralph’s diplomatic desire to see everyone work together and get along.
Ralph is the elected leader who governs through fairness and a sense of justice. He is concerned with the welfare of all the boys. He is the inspiration for Thomas’ character. The character opposing Jack is Ralph. Jack’s character represents the darkest aspects of human nature. He is unrestricted by societal norms however acts purely on base instincts. He comes to represent an irrational, unintellectual side of the human mind. A struggle to obtain power flares up between him and Ralph, who attempts to maintain a democratic order against Jack’s barbaric freedom.
Three boys, each with drastically different personalities, all crash on the same, sun-scorched island; one boy, fiery and impulsive, becomes enamored with the idea of hunting, while the other two stay rational and focused on rescue. William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, uses these children to represent the different aspects that exist in our subconscious mind: the id, the ego, and the superego. When he uses the Freudian psychoanalysis theory to personify the main characters in the book, Golding succeeds in successfully representing the three different aspects of the human psyche; therefore, the traits Ralph, Jack, and Piggy possess and the things they say can all directly correlate to the psyche and the traits of each different part.
The two main characters Ralph and Jack are polar opposites whose ideas are constantly clashing. Jack is an egotistical boy who is obsessed with complete power. Jack is angry that the group of boys voted Ralph to be their chief
Two of the primary characters, Jack and Ralph, who constantly fight to gain authority and respect from the boys on the island. Jack’s way of government is significantly based on dictatorship, he is constantly fighting against Ralph’s democratic ideas. When the boy’s become two rival groups, innocent and moral characters suffer the consequences of their actions. ( insert quote).
jack throughout the story is Ralph's counterpart representing what happens when one fully accepts humans dark inner nature. even at the beginning of the story he is shown to be violent and at odds with Ralph."he (jack) tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up" pg.51.this shows that even towards the beginning of the story jack was embracing savagery putting him at odds with Ralph, who
Is it better for someone to die for what they believe in, or is it better for someone to live and give up their believes? In novels, films, and even in real life, there are martyrs, those who are killed for what they think, and there are those who alter their morals to fit the status quo. These two types of people can be further characterized into two groups: those who do not change are weak, and those who do change are strong. Charles Darwin established a theory that states how what makes a person strong or weak is how they decide to deal with change. The naturalist states that even though some are vastly intelligent, kind, or dignified, they end up dying first because lack of adaptability, or refusal to do so. In William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, Simon is an example of the sort of weakness Darwin elaborates on in his theory. While he is the most wise out of the group and tries to help the boys as much as he can, Simon is the first main character to die because he is unable to keep up with the boys in both a physical and mental sense. Simon’s untimely death was caused by his refusal to abandon his civilized
Jack, negatively portrayed in comparison to Ralph, tempts the boys with an array of forbidden treats, indulging their most violent, suppressed desires in an attempt to lull them away from the security of Ralph. In a sense, Jack is negatively compared to Ralph throughout the novel, and is often portrayed as confused and violent, very aware of the evil inside of him: “The real problem that arises among the boys involves their own inner nature…” (Johnston 2). When his plan fails, Jack feels as though his seat of power is threatened and therefore resorts to terrorizing, threatening and essentially forcing the boys to join him and align themselves against Ralph, alienating them from their former, comfortable life-style and thus making what they once failed to appreciate all the more desirable.
When the war ended in 1945, Golding returned to his writing and teaching career. In 1954, Golding finally published his first and most praised fiction novel: Lord of the Flies. At the age of 73, William Golding was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1988. Golding died of a heart attack in Perranarworthal, Cornwall, on June 19, 1993. In addition to Lord of the Flies, Golding’s most successful novels include Rites of Passage (the winner of the 1980 Booker McConnell Prize), Pincher Martin (1956), Free Fall (1959), The Pyramid (1967), and The Paper Men (1984). Even though Golding was mainly a novelist, he also wrote poetry, plays, essays and short stories.