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Jack Merridew's Leadership

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Throughout the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding creates his stance on fascist leadership and how it can negatively affect others who are inferior to their leader. Jack Merridew is a teenage boy who had been a leader of a school choir when the plane crashed down on the island, leaving many teenage boys stranded without adult supervision during the bombings of World War II. After a few days, all of the boys spread out on the island meet up for the very first time and they all vote for a leader. The majority of the boys vote for his peer Ralph, a boy of similar age, and Jack is not happy about this. Throughout the book, Jack tries to gain power over varying encounters, even if it means sacrificing other living things including boys on …show more content…

Golding explores that Jack loves to hunt and kill pigs while on the island. Jack does this in a gruesome fashion and upon putting it to death ,“[Jack] began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling" (Golding 64). The use of imagery provides a sense of the harsh reality of what is happening to Jack as he is losing the civility he had arrived with every day. Throughout his evolution process, he has gotten to a point where Piggy claims,“I’m scared of him” (Golding 93) and that when he sees Jack, he feels that “it’s like asthma an’ you can’t breathe” (Golding 93). These words from a wise young boy, Piggy, are very concerning relating to the amount of civility Jack has left in him. As the civilized boys fear Jack every second of the day, Piggy and Ralph have a discussion and want to “ keep on the right side of him, anyhow. You can’t tell what he might do” (Golding 175). At this point, one of their fellow members, Simon, has already been put to death by Jack’s tribe and now the boys have to fear for their lives because of the unknown status of Jack at any time. Golding uses this type of language to represent fear in their voices because it is one of a leader 's most powerful tools for controlling a society. Jack teaches acts of killing and savagery of humans and other living animals, draining out every last ounce of civility the boys had upon their

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