Who Is Jack A Serial Killer In Lord Of The Flies

Plane down. Adults dead. No rescue. The Book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, features a group of English schoolboys ranging from ages 5 to 14 who crash land on a deserted island with no adult supervision and are left to build a society and fend for themselves. One of the main characters, named Jack, has a truly terrifying character progression throughout the book. Jack starts as an innocent, confident, leader from a group of proper English boys who then starts striving for power to maintain his big ego and to give himself confidence, and by the end of the book, Jack is long gone and has become a serial killer.

In the beginning of the book, the reader can clearly get an understanding of Jack and his confident, authoritative personality.

Stand still!” And then “Wearily obedient, the choir huddled into line” (20). This is the first look the readers get as to how Jack thinks of himself and how his peers see him. When he shouts to stand still, he is speaking authoritatively and in a way, talking down to them. Then, as the choir “obediently” got into a line, it’s easy to see that they are used to being treated like that. Jack could also be doing this to show the other kids that he is just now meeting, that he is a strong leader and to hint that he wants to be chief. A bit later on in the book, after a boy named Ralph had been selected as the leader, Jack went into the forest to hunt the wild pigs that inhabit the island. He finds a pig but ends up having an unsuccessful hunt and so he walks back to camp. He greets Ralph and when he is

But this isn’t an ordinary kill. After this kill, he cut off the pig's head and he “held up the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth”(136-137). This is probably the best example for Jack’s character evolution. He had gone from the boy who chickened out of killing a pig, to the boy who decapitated a fresh kill, and drove it onto a spear, as an offering for a jungle beast. Jack has been through so much at that point in time, that he’s gone completely dumb to murder and killing live animals. He is prepared for anything and will do what it takes if it means he survives. He’s taken on a more selfish persona and he’s completely forgotten how to take care of a group like he used to when he was at school with the choir. Ralph is getting fearful of what’s to come. Piggy asks him what they will do now that Jack left. “‘I’m chief’, said Ralph tremulously. ‘And what about the fire? And I’ve got the conch’” (150). Ralph is getting worried of what will happen to them, as a leader should, and when he’s in the moment, he is just trying to reassure himself and Piggy that he still has power and he remains in charge. Now isolate the word “tremulously”. The definition of tremulous is “shaking or quivering slightly”. If Ralph is truly quivering while he is saying this, Jack's plan to gain control is working because he is striking fear into Ralph. This shaking can also tell that