What Does The Mask Symbolize In Lord Of The Flies

The Mask In lord of the flies by William Golding, each of the main characters resemble some type of symbol. Jack is the leader of the choir and then becomes the leader of the hunters. He is gutless and wants power from everyone and everything. As he searches for his power from the boys on the island, he starts losing his humanity along with the others. He turns into a savage when hunting for pigs and eventually wears a Mask that the boys wear too. When they wear the Mask; which is essentially face paint, the boys are able to hide their identity as a civilized human, and have the opportunity to release any evilness and savagery within them. The colors of the Mask are dark and frightening. Black, red, and white are the colors used for the mask. In the story, Golding talks about the Mask when he states that, “ beside the pool his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them… .He capered toward bill, and the mask was a thing of his own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self consciousness. The face of red and white and black swung through the air and jigged toward bill.”(Golding 64) When reading the novel golding ended the story with a chapter called “cry of the

In this chapter, the boys who have shown to be strong and brave start to cry when golding states that, “His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too.”(Golding 202) The crying of the boys at the end of the novel showed how they realized how savage they