Jack In Society example essay topic

In William Golding's novel The Lord Of The Flies, each character represents a part of society. Jack, the leader of the choir boys and hunters, represents parts of society which can be broken down in three ways. The first part is Jack in society as a whole. Here, this blood thirsty savage is a symbol of all that is chaotic and disorderly. The tall, scrawny, 'ugly without silliness'; boy is constantly trying to break away from Ralph, who is orderly, and his rules. For example, Jack always breaks the rule of speaking while holding the conch.

He interrupts almost everyone, especially Piggy, when they are speaking. The fact that Jack frequently picks on Piggy is a symbol of how brawn and brutality will often overwhelm intellect (Piggy represents the intellectual part of society). Jack even goes as far as to break Piggy's glasses, another symbol of order and society, which shows how he is going to later destruct and eventually destroy every last part of normal society that remains on the island. The second part is life and death. In this case, Jack represents death.

This is first symbolized by Jack's black choir cloak, since black is associated with death. When Jack first appears, he comes out of the 'darkness of the forest'; and Ralph, the symbol of goodness, cannot see Jack's face because his back is to the sun. Darkness can be another symbol of death. Also, blood is something that we often can relate with death, and Jack is obsessed with killing the pigs on the island and shedding their blood. The blood shows how Jack turns into a savage, since at first he is afraid of the blood but he eventually is thirsty for it and smears it all over his own body and those of his followers, showing how he was practically in love with the blood and death of the pig. The third part is how Jack relates to certain aspects of religion.

Jack breaks practically all of the seven deadly sins associated with evil people. He lusts for blood, is greedy for power, is a glutton for meat, envies Ralph as chief, executes his wrath over Piggy, and has extreme pride, to name a few. Again, when Ralph first meets Jack, he cannot see his dark face. This can be seen as a symbol of a creature of darkness or evil, perhaps even the Devil, coming to meet the man of goodness and light, or Jesus Christ.

Also, Jack can almost be seen as a devil worshiper since he offers a gift of a pig's head (the Lord of the Flies) to the beast, the evil enemy of the boys on the island. William Golding most likely created the character Jack to represent communism and fascism during World War II. Jack is much like Adolph Hitler or Josef Stalin in that he was able to strike enough fear into some of the boys that would make them shed the blood of others, and that he was able to tell some of the boys exactly what they wanted to hear. Jack had some qualities that made him somewhat admirable. He expressed bravery in situations like going to find the beast on top of the mountain and was not afraid to kill the pigs for meat. However, he was still very destructive and refused to be orderly.

He basically wanted no part of organized society at one point because he let out the entire savage within himself. Jack is a symbol of all of the savagery that lurks inside of all human beings. Given the right situation, this inner savagery and ruthlessness will come forth, as can be seen perfectly in Jack, and destroy society as we know it..