Jack is a natural leader, and he is a good leader. He thinks he should be the Chief and dislikes Ralph from the beginning because he feels that Ralph took the power that should rightfully be his.
Ralph and Jack are very similar, and can be contrasted because they are both natural leaders. In a way, Ralph and Jack are the same person, but both have different priorities, and different leadership styles. Ralph is democratic and selfless, associated with order and control and tries to be fair. Jack, however, is a dictator, with a selfish leadership style, his priorities being only himself and hunting. Jack demands respect, whereas Ralph earns it. The point of this is to show that although two people may have the same qualities, the choices made by the people make a difference; it shows how the same person can turn out just because one chooses savagery and one chooses order and democracy. Ralph and Jack show the two kinds of mankind – good and evil.
Jack is the only boy whose last name we learn. This is because the choir call him ‘Merridew’ which shows that even at this point in the novel, Jack has authority and power. The fact that the choir use his last name is quite militaristic, but also is a way of Jack denying his identity and trying to make himself more powerful than he is. It is as though Jack does not want to be seen as a child, but as a figure of authority. This is also shown when Jack assumes he will be the Chief, revealing his arrogance.
Jack is motivated only by the negative emotions which turn him bitter. This is first shown when Ralph is voted for as leader and Jack is humiliated but is repeated many times throughout the novel. Jack keeps control by violence and aggression, shown in chapter one just before he goes exploring with Ralph and Piggy:
‘Jack snatched from behind him a sizeable sheath-knife and clouted it into the trunk. The buzz rose and died away’
The boys are quiet when Jack uses violence, and this is reinforced later in the novel when Jack sets up his own tribe, using violence to make the savages obey him. Jack has a natural arrogance which is shown all the way through the novel, and he barks instructions at people instead of talking to them, and this is hinted at in the first chapter but emphasized at the end of the novel.
Jack seems also to have an obsession to hunt, and this grows stronger after he is humiliated in the first chapter after being unable to kill the pig. Still conditioned by the society he was previously a part of, Jack couldn’t bring himself to kill the pig. The importance of the first pig he kills shows that Jack has taken the first steps towards savagery:
‘The enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood’
The quote hints that once you have become savage, there is no going back, and this is true, which makes it more horrifying when Jack first kills. It also shows that Jack is becoming less attached to the sense of morality he once has, and to any societal norms. His sense of morality fades and by the end it is almost completely gone and he feels no shame at hunting down Ralph, or at the murder of Piggy.
When Jack first hunts, he is animalistic, and hunts on all fours. When he is hunting, he feels more secure and more powerful, hinting at him becoming savage. When he hunts, he becomes in touch with the savage within him, and is so immersed in hunting that he forgets society’s values about excretement. At this point, although he is on all fours, he is ‘uncomfortable on all fours’ showing that he is not entirely at ease acting like an animal, but this changes as the novel goes on and he begins to resemble an animal more and more. Jack’s progression from human to animal is ape-like, and he seems to devolve from human to ape. Jack tries to describe the ‘immense pleasure’ hunting gives him, and this implies that later in the novel, hunting will become Jack’s sol purpose.
Jack does not like abiding rules and for him power comes with punishment. He believes rules are there so that when somebody breaks them, they can be punished.
Jack is the first of the boys to really adapt to the island, perhaps excluding Roger. Where Ralph and Piggy are desperate for rescue, Jack has no desire or need to be rescued, because he becomes part of the island – savage.
Jack starts to wear a mask halfway through chapter three. He wears it to hunt, because it hides his face, allowing him to be what he wants without being governed by his conscience or by shame or rules.
‘He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself, but at an awesome strange’
This shows Jack becoming someone else, that even he is in awe of. He can hide behind the mask, enabling him to ignore any guilt he may feel from the conditioning of the old world and blame his actions on the mask.
‘The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness
Towards the end of the novel, Jack no longer needs the mask, as he becomes totally desensitised and al of his values and sense of morality are forgotten. The mask represents the boys’ desires to be free and unpunished by their own guilt, but at this point, Jack is not part of the mask, he just hides behind it as it absolves him of any responsibility. The mask, however, controls him and not the other way round, showing eventually Jack will have no control over what he is doing and become a complete savage. The importance of Jack wearing the mask is that he enables all the boys to become savages by introducing the idea of masks, and this shows their next step of their progression into savagery.
When Jack becomes angry, he uses violence as is shown when he hits Piggy and breaks his glasses in chapter four and then when he attacks Piggy again in chapter five.
The novel expresses Golding’s views of war, especially the Second World War, and Golding uses Jack to represent Adolf Hitler. Hitler is the most famous and most renowned dictator, and as the novel goes on, Jack enforces dictatorship, as Hitler did. Jack works through fear and uses fear to control the others. Although he doesn’t actually believe in the beast himself, he uses it to make the others feel unsafe.
Jack is the leader of anarchy on the island and it is initially him that leads the other boys into savagery. He comes up with the idea of masks, allowing the boys to hunt freely without feeling shame or guilt, and he creates his own tribe, feeling nothing when killing Simon, Piggy or attempting to kill Ralph. Jack shows what Ralph would and could have been if he had chosen savagery, and is so immersed in savagery by the end of the novel that he is ‘recognisable only by his red hair and personality’. Jack shows the evil in mankind and what mankind has the potential to be if aggression outbalances leadership, logic and compassion.
