When the conch is first blown by Ralph, lots of other children are drawn to the sound, and follow the sound to meet Ralph and Piggy, when the children realise that there are no adults on the island there is a sense of panic but also excitement.
“Aren’t there any grown ups?”
Jack Merridew keeps questioning Ralph as to if there are any grown ups. When Ralph then suggests that they should elect a chief Jack immediately announces that he should be chief as he is the head choirboy. The choir are very formal dressed from “throat to ankle” in long black cloaks. They have a very sophisticated appearance, and march in time. Jack is their leader. Jack is the obvious leader. He is a strong and dominant character. The boys have an election. The voting for a leader seems like a game to the boys.
“The toy of voting was almost as pleasing as the conch.”
The boys from the choir automatically vote for Jack, but everybody else votes for Ralph as he has the conch, the symbol of power and authority at the beginning of the novel. Ralph shows what a good leader he is when he offers Jack the leadership of the choir.
“The choir belongs to you, of course. They could be the army, or hunters.”
All through out the novel Jack continuously tries to expand his leadership. Jack takes on the choir as hunters.
The hunting is one aspect of the novel where the reader can clearly see the downfall within the standards and morals of the boys. The first time that Jack and his army go off hunting, they find a pig, but Jack cannot kill it. He has a good chance of killing the pig, but he does not. Jack claims that he was “choosing a place” and just missed the pig, but everybody else knew that it was because of the “Unbearable blood.” The blood is too much for the boys, killing is bad enough but the blood is too horrific. Jack is partly embarrassed that he did not kill the pig, he felt smaller now, as he could not bring himself to kill the pig. The next time there is a hunt it is just Jack on his own and he fails to catch anything.
Jack’s image has changed a lot since the beginning of the novel.
“Except for tattered shorts held up by a knife-belt he was naked.”
Jack has gone from being one of the smartest boys to half naked and worn. The rest of the hunters all change too. Jack has made face paints out of clay and it compels the other boys to join him, and they all paint their faces. Now they have masks to hide behind, metaphorically and literally. The hunting starts to become more horrific now. This time when the boys go hunting they catch a pig, and make their way back to camp, chanting.
“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”
Jack and the boys are really excited at what they have done, everybody is eager to tell what happened to the others. Its seems that they have lost all their inhibitions, but the reader knows this is not so as Jack notices blood on his hands and feels wrong.
“ He noticed blood on his hands and grimaced distastefully.”
Jack looks for something to wipe his hands on as he cannot bear the blood on them. This time Jack does not seem so bothered by the fact that the pig bled. He describes it to Ralph excitedly. When Ralph tells Jack that Jack had let the fire go out and there had been a ship, Jack simply says “ you should have seen the blood!” Jack is getting distracted from being rescued. His hunting is more important to him. Jack later decided to break away from the group of boys and says that he does not need Ralph. The next killing is one of the worst, killing the mother pig who is feeding her young; In “deep maternal bliss.” She is ferociously killed in a beautiful clearing. Jack giggles as he kills her and flicks the blood on his fingers. The blood no longer bothers him. He is turning totally against they way he has been conditioned to live. Jack puts the pig head on a pole, creating some of the worst imagery in the novel.
The next killing that takes place is of Simon. The boys are starting to dance, their ritual. Dancing and chanting. Rhythmic chanting. There is lightening and Piggy and Ralph have given in and gone to join Jack and his tribe, they are scared of the storm and want the protection of being with the others. Whilst they are chanting something crawls out of the bushes and the tribe of now savages starts to chant even louder, they believe it the beast, they kill it. Stabbing it with spears. It is in fact Simon who had seen that there is no beast and has come to try and save them, but while he is trying to save them, the other boys are killing him. It seems that Simon is the only boy who doesn’t let his morals drop whilst he is alive on the island.
Stone throwing on the island is the cause of another death amongst the boys. Stone throwing starts off in a small way at the beginning of the play with Roger throwing stones at one of the little boys; Henry. But Roger throws to miss, the stones land in a circle around Henry. The circle symbolises they way that Roger has been conditioned by civilisation. The circle represents his parents, the police, his school, and the law. Roger doesn’t want to break the circle just as there are no adults. Towards the end of the book Ralph kicks a stone into the water by the entrance to castle rock.
“The sea sucked down revealing a red, weedy square forty feet beneath Ralph’s left arm.”
This is ironic as this is where Piggy meets his death. Roger pushes a large boulder off of the top of castle rock that comes crashing down and sends Piggy flying over the edge. Piggy lands the same way as the stone and his head is split open, and his arms and legs twitched “ a bit like a pigs after it had been killed.“
Jack has no remorse for what he has done, he simply makes an example of Piggy saying that that’s what you’ll get.
Jack treats Ralph like and animal and he is hunted down like a pig. Ralph tries to think like a pig as he tries to hide from Jack and his tribe.
“He wondered if a pig would agree.”
Jack tries to smoke Ralph out of the forest like an animal. Jack has no sense of humanity; all he is interested in is his tribe and everybody working for him.
The leaders change throughout the novel. As people become more bored with the rules and trying to keep order they take to Jack’s way of ruling. Ralph, Piggy and the conch, will offer them the best chance of survival, but Jack offers them fun, and excitement, like in books they have read. Jack just says no to Ralph’s rules and thw whole of the civilisation breaks down. Jack rules with as a dictator, he is idolised by the others as though he is above everybody else. At the beginning of the novel every one is working with pride, building huts, and happy with themselves and how they are getting on. At the end of the play, Jack is chosing who works, who plays, he has full control over they boys. The conch loses all value, and is smashed along with Piggy. When the conch breaks it is like the whole of the civilisation has broken.
Ralph, Piggy, Sam and Eric do try hard to keeps the civilisation going even when it is just them. The brush their hair and try to dress nicely, as a “Liberation to savagery.” But Ralph’s mind deteriorates at the same rate his appearance does, and no matter what he does he cannot hold on to it. Just as Percivil cannot remember his name when they are rescued. At the beginning of the novel Percivil, a small boy, can recite his name, address, and telephone number, but now at the end even his name surpasses him. The appearance of the boys goes from being very smart in uniform, to mostly naked, painted faces, long scruffy hair, and dirty skin. The boys standards seem to deteriorate with their appearance.
