When the boys find that there is no adult life on the island they think it is going to be fun. But in fact they do not have a way of civilization until Piggy decides that they should call a meeting. Jack’s tribe has a lack of civilization which makes everyone increasingly uncomfortable and scared, which is why everyone changed to Jack’s tribe in the first place.
Jack’s group at the start of the book says that they want to hunt, which seems quite harmless. However when they get carried away they become bloodthirsty and eventually turn on Simon as he crawls out of the undergrowth after talking to the “Lord of the Flies.” More fights break out as Jack becomes more jealous and untrustworthy of Ralph which is when Piggy’s glasses are stolen. The fight had “legs and arms everywhere” which shows struggle and a confusing battle.
Whereas the scenery seems beautiful the undergrowth and darker parts of the island is dense and obstructive; with the Castle Rock forming a dark, shady den. This suits Jack’s tribe which is described as “the densest tangle on the island, a mass of twisted stems, black and green and impenetrable.” The darkness symbolizes animosity and hides them from the rest of the boys.
When the boys paint their faces, they become a new character and seem to be evermore crazy and scarier, as if they think that they have a whole new unrecognizable identity. This is what brings on their need to hunt and kill. The height of the Castle Rock makes Jack’s tribe seem bigger and taller than the other boys. This may make them act differently as they think they are better than everyone else.
The island loses its paradise after the boys become intensively more and more agitated with each other. The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the novel, explored through the dissolution of the young English boys’ civilized, moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom themselves to a wild, brutal, barbaric life in the jungle. “Lord of the Flies” is an allegorical novel, which means that Golding conveys many of his main ideas and themes through symbolic characters and objects. He represents the conflict between civilization and savagery in the conflict between the novel’s two main characters: Ralph, the protagonist, who represents order and leadership; and Jack, the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for power.
As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in Chapter 12, who have hunted, tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless children swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them. Golding implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the novel, he discovers the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed before—a powerful symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood innocence.
