We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all we’re not savages

We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all we’re not savages

When the boys first step on the island they are very civilised; they

are all wearing clothes and walking around in groups exploring. Ralph

and Piggy then find a conch, and use it to contact the other boys on

the island. This moment establishes that the conch symbolises law on

the island. Every time the conch is blown all the children come for an

assembly.

When the first assembly is held, Ralph is voted in as chief, instead

of Jack. This frustrates Jack but Ralph consoles him and says that he

and his choir can be hunters, and Jack jumps at this opportunity. I

think this is the first indication of savagery as everyone is very

nervous and afraid, but as soon as Ralph mentions hunting to the choir

they are all quite excited. The savagery emerges with “hunting” as

“hunting” presents the image of killing. We see the boy’s developing

excitement of ideas of savagery with this passage, “Jack and Ralph

smiled at each other with shy liking. The rest began to talk eagerly.”

When Ralph, Jack, and Simon climb up the mountain to see across the

island, they come across a pig trapped in some vines when Jack draws

his knife and can’t bring himself to kill the pig, it is because he is

too civilised at this point in the book; "The pause was only long

enough for them to understand what an enormity the downward strike

would be." Here Jack doesn’t kill the pig however his attitude to

killing pigs, and indeed humans, changes radically during the story.

Chapter three opens with Jack hunting pigs through the jungle. Here,

there are many animal images attached to Jack, for example Golding

writes, “Jack was bent double….his nose only a few inches from the

humid earth.” and “Then, dog-like…on all fours”

The descriptions likening Jack to an animal show the first signs of

regression among the boys. The most relevant part in this section is

the part when Golding describes Jack as ape-like, because modern

humans evolved from apes, and so regression would lead to acting again

as apes. A line from the passage reads, “less a hunter than a furtive

thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees.”

Despite Jack's attempts, he does not kill a pig. He is obsessed with

hunting and killing a pig, after his previous embarrassing failure to

do so, with Ralph and Simon. "From the pig-run came the quick, hard

patter of hoofs, a castanet sound, seductive, maddening-the promise of

meat."

This desire is clearly overwhelming him. The desire to kill, and thus