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Ralph In William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

1794 Words8 Pages

Lord of the Flies begins with two boys walking through a jungle away from a crash site. Neither of them know if there are any other survivors so they walk through jungle to find any. While they are searching we find out that one of the kid’s names is Ralph. The other kid reveals that in school he was given the nickname Piggy and the book refers to him as such throughout the story. The boys find a conch shell in the beach. Piggy recalls that you can make noise if you blow in a conch and that maybe Ralph should use it to call any survivors. Ralph proceeds to blow into the conch and many boys, about their age, began to venture out of the jungle. Ralph refers to this meeting of all the boys as an assembly. At the first assembly we learn the names …show more content…

Since day one on the island, Jack has had a resentment towards Ralph. He does not like to follow the rules of Ralph’s society, shown by him frequently interrupting the holder of the conch. Jack also loves the thrill of the hunt. He is constantly hunting for pigs and degrades Ralph for not helping with hunts. Ralph would fail to see the importance of anything but hunting. He let the smoke signal go out so that he could hunt pigs. Contrary to Ralph’s theory of the beast, that the beast is made up and poses no threat, Jack believes that there is a beast on the island, and that through the power of the tribe, they could hunt and kill the beast. Jack prefers dominance and an emotion over Ralph’s idea of structure. Roger is perhaps the darkest of all the characters.His strongest desire throughout the book is to harm others. We learn in the book that civilization taught him to mask his instinct to harm. While Ralph is in charge, the order that his society provides, also masks Roger’s want to harm. This is shown when he is throwing rocks at another boy but won't throw within a 6 foot radius around the boy. When Jack takes over, there is no longer any order to mask his true identity. It shows when he launches a boulder over the cliff and kills

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Ralph is all by himself, with no one else to help him, but Jack has his overwhelming dominion over the boys, commanding them to do deeds for him. The alpha sends them out to hunt Ralph while dragging him to the open. Jack is the most captivating character because he is the most violent person on the island. The hunt leader creates a party to kill a pig and chooses not to focus on getting off the isle and draws attention to an act of violence; after returning from the hunt, Jack and the boys carry a pig’s head on a stick. The description of the offering amplifies the overuse of violence with the pig’s blood on the stick and the flies that swarm it.

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977 Words | 4 Pages

Frequently, Jack attempts to turn the boys against Ralph, only caring for his own desires. For example, “He’s not a hunter. He’d never have got us meat. He isn’t a prefect and we don’t know anything about him. He just gives orders and expects people to obey him for nothing.

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112 Words | 1 Pages

In addition to Jack, Roger also represents the true evil in mankind. Roger arrives to the remote island as a shy kid who barely has the courage to talk. The longer Roger stays on the island the more violent and careless he become, “Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever” (180). At this point Roger is acting off of his primitive instinct, and becoming the biggest savage on the island. Speaking about his savagery, Roger kills Piggy with a huge boulder which not only kills Piggy, but destroys the conch into smithereens.

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700 Words | 3 Pages

He becomes one of the prominent leadership figures and his interest in establishing a society aligns with Ralph’s, the first elected leader, but he shows a propensity for aggressive behavior by yelling that it would "serve [them] right if something did get [them], you useless lot of cry-babies!" (Golding 64). Choosing to attack the young boys for their fears plays into Jack’s fanaticism about his nearly-embraced island life. Becoming defensive about what he is doing for the group, he attacks the same people he attempts to govern. Later, the ideological differences between Jack and Ralph prove too great, and Jack sets fire to the island in his bid to kill him, “smoke...seeping through the branches in white and yellow wisps, the patch of blue sky overhead turned to the color of a storm cloud” (152).

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1093 Words | 5 Pages

Jack’s conflicts with humanity and himself heavily contributed to his corruption and the downfall of the society on the island. Throughout the time on the island Jack became motivated by jealousy and hatred. Ever since the very first day on the island, Jack has been jealous of Ralph. Jack’s resentment towards Ralph grew as the time on the island did.

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1231 Words | 5 Pages

Roger’s Evolving Characterization In the novel, The Lord of the Flies, William Golding explains how civility can be lost when power is abused. Roger is one of the boys who is stranded on the island, and is isolated from the war raging outside their small world. At the beginning of the book, Roger was presented as a sly, secretive boy who displays cruelty towards the weak and vulnerable boys. While Jack has a thirst for the power to be in charge, Roger desires power because he likes the idea of hurting the boys around him. Once he joins Jack's tribe, he slowly turns into the hangman of the group by torturing Samneric until they join the tribe, preparing a stick to impale Ralph's head on and eventually causing Piggy's death.

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622 Words | 3 Pages

Piggy is very intelligent, he comes up with ideas on how to help the boys survive on the island from the moment they crashed on it. Ralph starts begins to admire him for this clear focus on their rescue off the island. “ we can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when they hear us” (Pg 16)

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1101 Words | 5 Pages

Yet later, as Jack gets a taste of power, his appetite for it becomes insatiable and his belief in civility is lost, thus losing himself to his animal instincts and violent impulses. This civilization versus savagery conflict is explored throughout the entire novel and shows how the moral code influences and tests each of the characters. Towards the end of the book, while Roger and Jack create plans to kill Ralph, Jack questions, “’What could they do? Beat him? So what?

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635 Words | 3 Pages

At first, they did not believe it, but as time went on, they saw more and more signs that it was real, even though it was not. Many of the boys are scared, which leads them to think that one of the boys is the beast that they are all scared of. They kill the boy, which shows that fear and chaos not only affect Roger, but some of the other boys, too. This all causes Roger to become more violent, which is out of his own hands because of the conditions that he is put in, therefore not his

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422 Words | 2 Pages

His tyrannical break from the original tribe, shows how impulsive many of his decisions are. Jack chose a second in command who didn’t have a hunger for power as great as his own, Roger was brute-like and built to be a hunter. Rodger was someone who could physically protect Jack and push fear onto the ‘littluns’. Jack in many situations,was driven to violence, with Piggy and with Ralph, his quick temper is not the best for leadership position, especially when Rodger already had a history with terrorizing the younger boys. Jack and Roger created a duo much unlike that of Ralph and Piggy, Jack used his power for murder and fear, Ralph used his influence for intimidation and nad control over those weaker than

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467 Words | 2 Pages

Explain why the framers of the United States Constitution ultimately decided to give more power to the federal government rather than the state governments, be sure to include the Federalist and Antifederalist views of the outcome. One of the topics I will be talking about is the problems the Articles of Confederation had. Another is the Federal government and the State government. The last topic I will talk about is what does the constitution say about Federal and state powers. Are you for or against how the United States Constitution decided to give more power to the Federal government than the state government.

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843 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the novel, Jack consistently demonstrates a disregard for rules and a desire for dominance and power. When he leads the boys in hunting and violence, he taps into their savage and primal instincts - including Ralph’s. As Jack proclaims, "The conch doesn't count at this end of the island" (Golding, 150) it becomes evident that he prioritizes dominance and power over order, authority, and the established rules on the island. In the midst of their destructive rivalry, Jack’s failures teach Ralph important lessons. Witnessing Jack’s inability to maintain the signal fire makes Ralph recognize the value of collaboration, communication, and planning for survival.

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836 Words | 4 Pages

They become different because of the extreme environment and new experiences around them. The characters of Jack, Roger, and Ralph change in terms of their behavior by becoming savagely brutal, which shows the significant influence of their experience on the island. Jack changes his behavior by becoming savagely brutal. He becomes like a savage and very brutal when he kills a sow without hesitation. He is eager to hunt and willing to kill pig after the first hunting

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1255 Words | 6 Pages

By the end of the book, Jack has organized a hunt for the only boy left that has not joined his tribe and has the intent to kill him. Roger displays more of a psychopathic personality; he kills whenever he can, and finds extreme amusement in causing harm to others. At one point, Roger intentionally throws a boulder down onto another child and kills him. Roger’s thirst for blood is his dominant characteristic and he displays very little personality other than his wish to kill.

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1400 Words | 6 Pages

The Illusion of Human Nature An important portion of a fictional story depends on the development of its characters. During this process, the more an author adds to the complexity of the characters, the realism of the story improves. Therefore, if done correctly, the character will not be defined through a single word; a similar concept of development also applies to human nature. Namely, in the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding illustrates human nature as inherently evil through his depiction of an island full of English boys that starts with civilization and ends in savagery.

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