preview

Evolution of Jack's Character Depicted in Golding's Novel, The Lord of the Flies

Decent Essays

William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of The Flies’ tells the story of a group of English boys isolated on a desert island, left to attempt to retain civilisation. In the novel, Golding shows one of the boys, Jack, to change significantly. At the beginning of the book, Jack’s character desires power and although he does not immediately get it, he retains the values of civilized behaviour. However, as the story proceeds, his character becomes more savage, leaving behind the values of society. Jack uses fear of the beast to control the other boys and he changes to become the book’s representation of savagery, violence and domination. He is first taken over with an obsession to hunt, which leads to a change in his physical appearance This change …show more content…

I thought, by myself…I thought I might kill.”. The reader can see from this that Jack’s vocabulary is composed of only monosyllabic words as he is preoccupied only with thoughts of slaughtering. We can also interpret that Jack feels as if he has to kill in order to gain respect for himself. Jack shows this pride when he does eventually kill a pig and he retells the story of the hunt to the rest of the boys. He and some of the boys re-enact the murder in a savage and primitive style. Therefore, we can see how his behaviour has been affected as a result of his compassion and need to hunt. This change in his behaviour is very significant as hunting is how Jack begins to establish his power over the group. Soon after the killing of the first pig, Jack is able to become more powerful and Ralph begins to realise this so he says, “I’m calling an assembly.”, as he feels in danger of losing control.

The physical appearance of Jack also changes greatly within the novel. Golding portrays Jack’s fixation with hunting to cause this. At the beginning of the novel, his image is described as like the other choirboys, wearing shorts, a shirt and a black cloak, “finished off with a hambone frill”. However, we see that in Chapter three, his physical characteristics have now changed from a choirboy to a hunter. This is shown where it says, “His bare back was a mass of dark freckles and peeling sunburn…he was naked.". His image also becomes

Get Access