Jack Merridew's Savagery

In the novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Jack Merridew represents savagery, the thirst for blood and violence in order to depict the most basic state of mankind. The story begins with a group of English boys surviving on a stranded island with minimal communication to the rest of the world. The isolation brings the barbaric and undomesticated state of the human being, about through acts such as hunting, killing and fighting. In the beginning, Golding portrays Jack in the jungle, on all fours with “…sandy hair, considerably longer than it had been when they dropped in…his bare back was a mass of dark freckles and peeling sunburn” (Golding, 48). The author displays Jack as more of an animal than human, with long hair, on all fours and a back of “dark freckles and peeling sunburn.” Here, the reader’s mind envisions an animal poised …show more content…
Moreover, Golding describes the boys ‘hair “considerably longer than it had been when they dropped in.” The author suggests that Jack is straying away from society because he no longer cares for the neatness or elegance his image, whereas in civilization, people tend to their hair by keeping it neat and out of their way. As the novel progresses, Jack is making a mask enable to kill a pig, but more importantly, to fulfil his desire for blood and violence. When Jack finishes his mask, “…he began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling…the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness” (Golding, 64). Golding describes Jack as an animal rather than a man when “[he] became a bloodthirsty snarling.” Through this description, Golding declares that with every new way to hunt, Jack deviates off the path of civilized life. The author claims that when Jack has his mask on, he is “liberated from shame and self-consciousness,” therefore allowing him to break the bond that he has with civilization and perform actions that are unacceptable when he still lived