Another example of violence creating a dysfunctional society in Lord of the Flies is when Jack and the hunters let the fire out to go kill their first pig. “I cut the pig’s throat,” said Jack, proudly, and yet twitched as he said it. “Can I borrow yours, Ralph, to make a nick in the hilt?” The boys chattered and danced. The twins continued to
Each of the groups, instead of acting as separate people, act as one. People have called this mob mentality. Mob mentality brings out the evil in man, as shown when Jack and the choir boys left to make their society, when they killed “the beast” who turned out to be Simon, and when all the
Additionally, Golding reveals that even
Kill the pig! Bash him in!" (Golding 104) They go after the sow and torture it, which fills the boys with excitement even more. Even after the pig is dead, they still feel the need to torment and jump on it.
The true savagery and civilization are in the boys, all of them. The beast says that it is within the boys, and it warns Simon if he went to the other boys it will be there. It was not lying as it was there, and it killed him. The savage and civilized boys are the beats themselves they have all been scared, they did what a beast would do, which is attack and
In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies Jack transforms from a boy who 's determined to hunt and find food for the group of boys, to a power hungry savage who disagrees with Ralph. As Jacks chaotic actions increases, the reader will notice how fear and chaos will drive people to extreme behaviors. Jack is assigned to be one of the hunters on the island and he becomes obsessed with killing the pig. Golding sets the scene by writing “the madness came to his eyes again”... “I thought I might kill” (53).
When Jack wanted hunt, he was worried that no one thought he could, that people thought that he was weak. He pushed himself to kill the pig and became obsessed. Jack was obsessed with the power it made him feel and the power that he thought he inherited with the group. When Jack pauses the first time they went hunting, it's proof that he couldn’t kill at first, he had to become “zoned” in and disassociate himself with the actual hunting before he could make his first kill. Once he overcame his fear of killing his humanity, he was able to not only kill pigs, but also kill people, and be okay with it.
After Simon’s death, Jack sends his hunters to grab Piggy’s glasses in order to light fire, and that breaks the tension between Ralph and Jack, finally resulting in Piggy’s death. At this point, Jack transforms into a blood-thirsty killer and targets Ralph. The twins reveals Jack’s plan to Ralph and say: “‘the chief and Roger-’ ‘-yes, Roger-’ ‘They hate you, Ralph. They’re going to do you.’ ‘They’re going to hunt you tomorrow’”(188).
But Simon intended to inform the boys of the imaginary beast as only being the instinctual savagery that exists within every human being. Throughout the novel, the boys’ believe in the beast grows stronger simultaneously with them growing more savage. The boys never get to know of Simons realizations. Earlier in the novel, the hunters spear a pigs head as sacrifice to the beast. Simon ends up having an imaginary dialogue with the pig head.
The Beast began as a figure in water and then became the “Beast from air”. Jack’s group of savage hunters made an offering to the Beast in the form of the Lord of the Flies – a pig’s head on spike. By the boys proceeding to do this, it shows how savage they were beginning to get – for not only making an imaginary ‘thing’ an offering but for killing a pig and placing its head on a spike, showing their vindictive, mutilative traits developing.
So watch; and be careful” (177) Jack not even saying he was at fault in Simon’s death, instead says that Simon was actually the beast, to keep the boys under control with fear. Jack is a devious person who goes into the deep end of savagery after having no rules to follow and becomes a pseudo
Simon later encounters the Lord of the Flies (a pig’s head on a stick that Jack left as a sacrifice for the beast) who “speaks” to Simon while he is having a brain clot. The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that it is the beast, that it’s inside of everyone. “Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!” (Page 143) it tells him, reminding Simon that to defeat the “beast”, or evil, within a person is impossible to physically accomplish. It’s as if everyone has a ticking time bomb of malevolence that is kept in check by our moral values and societal standards.
The pigs head on the wooden stake is seen as an offering to the beast instead of what should have been usually a victory statement. Jack uses the fear of the beast to control the boys. It would appear that the boys cannot separate their civilized
One symbol that Golding uses is the killing of the sow by the boys. The killing of the sow symbolizes the terror human is going to bring to nature, it shoes how evil overpowers everything, and it resides nowhere but inside the human (Thapliyal and Kunwar). The boys taking their hunting to a whole new level after the kill the sow. They start to reenact the killing and make an event out of it. This takes a turn for the worst when the boys end up killing Simon because they mistake him for the beast.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.” (Lincoln, Abraham “Speech in Clinton Illinois on September 2, 1858) In the Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a large group of English boys crashed on an island and were left with no adults. (Golding 8) The boys have no water, food, first-aid, and no additional clothing.