Power In Lord Of The Flies Quote Analysis

Power is like a two-edged knife; on one side, it is a tool when used suitably. If it is not, it becomes the cause of irreversible damage. The English Oxford Living Dictionaries defines power as “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.” Bryant H. McGill describes power as something “all a person has, so they will protect it even unto their own destruction, for without power they have nothing.” This quote describes how in Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the island society the boys create crumbles when Jack takes the power and uses it for his benefit. Golding shows the reader how the island society starts to fall when the boys start using the face paint and start descending into savagery,

At the end of the novel, Ralph runs out to the beach and sees the naval officer. His mind starts to process everything that has happened and “his voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island,” as he “[weeps] for the end of innocence [and] the darkness of man’s heart.” (Golding 224-225) As the boys are chasing Ralph, as per Jack’s commands, they set the entire forest on fire for the second time. The abuse of power causes irreversible damage, and this is proven at the end of the novel. Fire is a chemical reaction with chemical changes; meaning the changes are irreversible, and whatever is burned cannot go back to the original state. When Jack misuses his power and tells the boys to set the forest on fire to draw out Ralph, they cause irreversible damage to the island. This symbolizes the death of the well-mannered ways of the boys. At this point in the novel, the boys are having a manhunt, they are throwing away everything they are taught from their old life, and becoming

At the beginning of the book, the boys start smearing coloured mud and clay when they go hunting. When Jack put on the clay, Golding describes it as a “mask, [...] a thing of its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness”. (Golding 66) From that point on in the novel, Jack is not seen without his clay mask on. When the other boys put on the clay as well, they all begin to slowly start falling into a savage behaviour. It starts only when they go hunting. They start chanting, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” (Golding 72) The chant and the way the boys hunt resembles a sacrificial ritual, and slowly, the boys start acting that way all the time, not only when they hunt. The Oxford English Living Dictionaries define savage as fierce, violent, uncontrolled, cruel and vicious; aggressively hostile, as well as a people regarded as primitive and uncivilized. When the boys wear the masks of clay and mud, they are brazen and forget the ways of their old life in civilization. The boys follow Jack in his ways, and he uses the face paint as a tool when he overthrows Ralph and takes power of the