Because the boys become obsessed with hunting, they paint their faces in order to camouflage themselves from their prey symbolizing their inner savagery. Jack, as usual, starts the face painting as a way of hiding behind a mask and becoming a new person. His first encounter hunting a pig ends with Jack letting it go because he is still civilized. When he meets the pig again, he is able to kill it while his face is camouflaged. Soon, most of Jack’s followers copy him and so begin the first acts of savagery. : “A mask that drew their eyes...his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling...and a mask was a thing of its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness” (64). Jack's mask of face paint creates an ability to
