Jack And The Conch Lord Of The Flies Analysis

Communication, law and order make up a good civilization, but that’s not what is being done on this island. The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding is about a group of young boys who get stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere after a plane crash during a war. The boys try their best to stay civilized, survive, find, and kill a beast they think is on the island. While being on the island the boys slowly start changing, and things get deranged. Jack and the conch help show that individuals are affected negatively without a strong sense of law and order in the novel Lord of the Flies. As the impression of law and order declines, Jack is affected negatively. For example, in an earlier chapter Ralph has just called a meeting

First, while everyone is off doing who knows what on the island, Ralph, Jack and Simon are all talking about what is happening and what they need to do. Ralph then starts to talk about how everyone listens to the conch. “I bet if I blew the conch this minute , they’d come running. Then we’d be , you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set.” When Golding said, “if I blew the conch they’d come running” it is showing that in this point of the novel the boys still are listening to something that has power and effectiveness over them. When the quote says, “one of them would say to build a jet” the boys are still working together and talking trying to figure out what is best to do. This means when the conch was their sense of law and order the boys were good, weren’t unhinged, were working together, and communicating. This goes back to the topic sentence because it is telling that the boys weren’t affected negatively when they had some sort of control in this case the conch. Second, in a later passage of Lord of the Flies Jack and Piggy set up the conch as bait for Jack and the hunters to take, but when Jack and the hunters came they got into a brawl with hitting, kicking, and biting until Jack and his hunters finally left. Once the fight was over Jack walked over to where he placed the conch and he noticed it was still there. “They didn't take the conch” “I know, they didn’t come for the conch” When it says, “they didn’t come for the conch” it is saying that Jack and the hunters came for who knows what, but it wasn’t to get the conch and have the power. It also may express that they came just to fight Ralph and Piggy and possibly try to kill them like they killed Simon. This shows that when the boys stopped caring about the