Could someone be so cruel, they value hunting over a chance of rescue? Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel. Lord of the Flies is about young boys who survive an airplane crash during a world war. The boys try their best to survive but poor leadership, misbehaving kids, and the loss of civility send the group in a bad direction. Jack is responsible for the end of the downfall of the boys on the island because he becomes hyper-focused on hunting, his desperate need for power, and Jack’s unwillingness to follow the rules. This event demonstrates the theme that putting your own self-interests before everyone else is harmful. In Lord of the Flies Jack focuses all his attention on hunting, sometimes leading to bad events as an outcome. Jack's strong fixation is one of the main factors in the demise of the downfall of the boys. Jack throughout the book has many encounters with pigs …show more content…
This quote highlights this very clearly: “They all know why he hadn’t; because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood.” (Golding 41). This quote refers to Jack's struggle to kill the pig. Jack cannot handle the very gruesome and violent image that will come out of killing the pig. This creates a problem for the boys. Jack spends all his time trying to hunt this pig but cannot bring himself to kill it. Jack wastes time hunting the pig all day when he could be spending time doing something beneficial for the group. Eventually, Jack's focus on the pig leads to the fire going out, “You let the fire go out.” …“We can light the fire again. You should have been with us, Ralph. We had a smashing time . . . There were lashings of blood,” said Jack, laughing and shuddering, “you should have
There came a pause, a hiatus” (Golding 31). As you can see in the quote he hesitated and couldn’t kill the pig becasue in the begging the evil in the boys hadn’t been uncovered yet. Later on he progressed to loving killing the pigs and when he got his first kill he was ecstatic “Jack held up the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick … a little blood dribbling down the stick” (Golding 136-137). He almost enjoyed killing the pig and after the quote it talks about
In addition, Jack demonstrates a choleric temperament when he addresses Piggy rudely and “Jack dragged his eyes away from the fire.” and says “You’re always scared. Yah- Fatty! (Golding 45)” Even though the boys need to focus on being rescued, Jack ignores the necessity of the fire and focuses on his own desire to hunt.
Only asking the abandoned boys to keep a fire burning, Ralph, the chief, hoped to send a smoke signal for a rescue. Taking all of the boys hunting except for Ralph and Piggy, an obese and discriminated child, Jack kills a pig; however, Jack brought everyone on a hunt instead
Following the desperate chase after the sow, “Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push...the spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands” (Golding 135). Unlike before, this scene conveys that Jack and the boys in his tribe are capable of killing and committing brutal acts. While Jack hesitates to kill a pig at the beginning of the book because of his fears of blood and death, he eventually becomes obsessed with hunting and violence, killing a sow by vigorously “stabbing downward with his knife” and slitting the sow’s throat.
This is ironic where that Ralph had given Jack the responsibility of making sure the fire was always there and had boys to watch for any sign of help but since they all fell asleep, they lost the chance of being rescued. 2. “We don’t need the conch any more. We know who ought to say things.” (101-102) We:
Then Jack leapt to his feet, slashed off a great hunk of meat and flung it down at Simon's feet. ‘Eat! damn you!’ He glared at Simon.” (Golding 74).
Jack did not succeed in hunting down the pig but said that he will kill it next time. Jack did not kill the pig because he was afraid of the blood from the pig. He was embarrassed that he could not do it and he wanted to show people that he is a hunter and he is strong enough to do it. In the novel it says, "Kill the pig! Cut her throat!
They were in desperate need of meat and the sow was their source of precious protein. When they seized her, Jack "was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Then (he) found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands." He even took it further, as the author wrote, "He giggled and flicked them while the boys laughed at his reeking palms" (Golding 135). This is definitely not something a sane human would act in a situation when they are covered in another once breathing animal's blood.
Jack pauses before stabbing the pig and the boys realize what is really going to happen if they continue, and that they will be responsible for the death of a living thing. Later on they lose this naivety and that is evident in the quote “ Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands” (pg 135). Here it is shown how savage to boys have really become, and how much
He goes to share his hunting story to Ralph and a boy named Piggy. On page 69, the narrator shares, “I cut the pig’s throat,’ said Jack, proudly, and yet twitched as he said it.” This quotation shows us that civilization is lost when the urge to kill takes over because it shows the stage where Jack is proudly killing animals, but still feeling a little bit uncomfortable with it. In this example, Jack proudly shares that he has killed, but still twitches after saying he did. Jack is still hanging onto the little bit of civilization that is left on their island.
According to the author, Jack is realizing that the only way he can have power is by hunting for others, but the more he hunts the most violent he becomes, but since he does not think fondly of piggy he does not give him meat, but when Simon gives him meat, throws meat at him and yells, "Eat! Damn you!" (pg 67). This short quote reinforces my answer because it shows how jack has become more aggressive, violent, and power-crazy. The examination of this quote reveals jacks blood-lust for power, and I'm not just talking about jack, in the book Jack represents savagery in society, violent acts when no one is looking, he represents that anyone can feel bloodthirsty for power, so furthermore Jack is exposed by that quote showing that he becomes more savage and his true nature rolls in, but he is also aware of it, he wears a clay mask towards the end of the book to cover up his insecurity and how he feels about his actions so he can have the power to not realize his actions and do things without thinking realistically.
As the novel develops, the boys are left to their own devices and morals to survive on the island. Golding implies that when this happens, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery and a human evil that he believes is in everyone. When Jack kills the mother pig, he is in great triumph over outwitting a living thing. This shows that he has become a savage through his time on the island, and his inner evil has taken over him. It also shows that Jack has become more violent over time, as if killing pigs is normal to him.
`Are you accusing—?’”(51). Jack's mind is descending into darkness, it is hyper-fixated on one thing, meat. This is the first time we see Jack’s lust for blood evolve. He now has the intention and perhaps the instinct to kill. After the first successful hunt, the hunters came back to the beach and started to exclaim to everyone how they killed the pig, seeming perhaps quite happy: “‘There were lashings of blood,’ said Jack, laughing”(69)
He goes hunting with other boys on the island, and they successfully kill a pig. Unfortunately, they let the signal fire out in the process. Ralph tries to look for the boys, when they come marching in, carrying a dead pig. The boys, led by Jack, are chanting “kill the pig. Cut her throat.
Jack has changed greatly, over the course of William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies. Crashing onto an island without adults and having to survive put a strain on all of the boys, but Jack’s personality altered the most due to this experience. He went from living as an ambitious choir boy, to being a vicious, brutal, beast. Many things changed Jack on the island, but most of all, he created the monster he became.