The boys’ first sign of abandoning the very basic of morals occurs when Ralph, Jack and Simon go exploring. Jack’s obsession with hunting begins here; something inside him is awoken. They’ve only been on the island a few hours, and Jack is already attempting to kill a pig. However, they realise the ‘enormity’ of stabbing a living thing and can’t face the ‘unbearable blood’.
At this stage, the conch is the symbol of respect, authority and silence. They respect the conch. The choir are already embracing life on the island and disregarding civilisation as they had ‘discarded their cloaks’. However, Jack doesn’t respect Ralph or the conch; he interrupts them ‘excitedly’ as he expresses his desire of having ‘lots of rules’. This shows his hunger for power and how he undermines Ralph, showing his lack of respect for authority. Ralph wants to be civilised: make a signal fire and build shelter. Jack, on the other hand, ops for hunting pigs as he is consumed with blood lust.
Perhaps the first sign of violence towards another person is by Roger. He deliberately wants to startle Henry; he does this by throwing stones at him. However, he ‘threw to miss’ as there was ‘an invisible, yet strong’ shield around Henry that prevented him harming Henry – ‘the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law’. Roger wants to act on his violent impulse, it’s only the last grip society has on him that stops him.
The significant moment of descending into savagery is Jack’s first kill. The pig is a metaphor of their morals and innocence: they’ve lost both.
These 12 year old boys lose the grip society has on them. It encourages the reader to consider how awful the World would be without any rules or authority in an anarchy environment. It shows how this moral fabric is rarely within us (like Simon) but instead given to us by civilisation. Without this thread, everyone, even innocent children, have a great capacity for evil.
