Jack – The Lord of the Savages

Jordan Bleach

In the book Lord of the Flies, William Golding suggests that without a civilized environment, one will lose one’s morals and sense of rules. While on the island, the boys, whom the book is based on, become very savage-like. David Anderson states, " Homo sapiens is fallen from birth because moral evil is the other aspect of intellectual power. There is no need to posit some special act in order to account for the fall of man: moral evil is the price man must pay for his rationality and his creative imagination. It follows that there is no ground in man himself for hope of goodness; evolutionary progressivism is a delusion…" (155-62). Anderson’s thoughts support the theme of this book, because he is saying that man has moral evil. The boys don’t stay under order and they lose their manners. Since there are no adults on the island, there is no real authority figure, so there really aren’t any rules because nothing is seriously enforced.        

Jack is a strong example of a boy losing his morals. Throughout the book Jack loses all of his compassion and his sympathy for anyone and anything. Jack really doesn’t care about taking the life of a pig. While hunting one he chants, "Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood" (69). Jack gets all of his hunters to chant along with him. He is the first one to really lose all of his sense of rule and slowly brings everyone with him.

Jack also doesn’t care about certain boys on the island. He has a strong dislike for Piggy and doesn’t seem to respect him or his feelings. Throughout the book Golding shows the dislike Jack feels for Piggy. He writes, "… and Jack smacked Piggy’s head. Piggy’s glasses flew off and tinkled on the rocks" (71). Jack has no cares and no worries, and he’s very selfish. Jack also becomes very animal-like while being on the island and away from civilization. When he hunts, he’s described as being   “down like a sprinter, his nose only a few inches from the humid earth" (48). This proves that he becomes very primitive. Jack also starts to believe that rules are pointless and unimportant. When this happens, he says, "Bullocks to the rules! We’re strong—we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat--!" (91). Jack has an extreme loss of rule and good sense while being on the island away from civilized society.     

I believe Jack best supports this theme. He is the leader of the savages at the end of the book. He basically leads the boys into savagery. If it weren’t for him no one else would have fallen into that behavior, mostly because no one was as outgoing or intimidating as Jack was. Jack knew how to get the boys to listen to him, and he did whatever it took. He lost all of his good sense and brought the other boys with him. After being on the island for so long, away from the civility of their home country, England, most of the boys lose their morals and values.