Lord of the Flies - The Evil in Us All The choir belongs to you of course. They could be the army-. or hunters ( Lord of the Flies pg. 21 ). That was Ralphs big mistake, giving Jack that power and the right to be hunters.
That power led to the fall of their civilization and the take over of Jacks savage tribe.There is evil within everyone and everything, it is just a matter of whether or not you let it take control of you. That is what The Lord of the Flies , a novel by William Golding, tries to express. Through analyzing the character of Jack you can see how the savagery takes him over little by little as he develops mentally, physically, and emotionally throughout the novel.
Jack declined more than developed mentally throughout the book. I ought to be chief, said Jack with simple arrogance, because Im chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing a C sharp ( pg. 21 ).Jack was a normal young boy, maybe a bossy one, but still a boy.
They hate you Ralph. Theyre going to do you. Theyre going to hunt you tomorrow- Jack, the chief says its going to be dangerous, and to throw our spears like at a pig ( pg. 172 ).Jack was a boy who became a savage beast.
The more power Jack gained over the other boys the less he cared about civilization, and the more he declined mentally. What force could cause someone to hunt a fellow man like he was an animal? As well as changing mentally Jack also changed physically. The creature was a party of boys, dressed in strangely eccentric clothing. Shorts, shirts, and different garments they carried in their hands; but each boy wore a square black cap with a silver badge on it.
Their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black cloaks which bore a long silver cross on the left breast and each neck was finished off with a hambone frill ( pg.18 ). That was Jacks appearance when he first arrived on the island. Not only was he dressed, but quite fancily. Theyll be painted! You know how it is. They understood only too well the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought.
( pg. 157 ). Jack had transformed into a painted naked savage. In one point of the book Ralph comments about how he can not even remember what Jack looks like. How does one go from a sophisticated English boy to being a dirty painted beast? Jacks passions changed quite drastically.He started out by wanting power, to be chief.
Then his passion moved to killing a pig. Once he had killed a pig all of his attention turned to killing. He went from wanting to kill pigs to needing to kill them. Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife.
-Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her.( pg. 123 ). That is just one example of how Jacks passions overtook him.
Eventually Jacks passion went from killing pigs to killing people. He initiates the killing of Simon, is involved in the death of Piggy, and plans the death of Ralph.What could possibly drive a young boy to commit such acts? When Golding wrote the character of Jack he was representing mankind as a whole. The way Jack declined as a person is showing how people change when they are in a situation like that.
Some might say that Jack was only human, and he might be. But being human comes with a lot of baggage, and you have to be able to control your emotions. That is what drove Jack to do all of those horrific things.He could not control the evil, the evil that is in us all.
