Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures in Lord of the Flies (Free Essay Sample)

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies exposes the evils of human nature. The novel tells the story of a group of children stranded on an island after a plane crash. Quickly, these children realize that they have to fend for themselves. They would go on to go through a series of moral dilemmas and what seemed to be insurmountable physical barriers before they were eventually rescued. William Golding uses his characters to represent different components of human nature. Jack, the best of these examples, shows the hostility, greed, and deceitful nature of humans.

Jack’s hostility and malice grew as he spent more time on the island; Jack shows us how people change when faced with stressful times. When Jack first arrived on the island, Jack couldn’t bring himself to kill a pig. “They knew very well why he hadn’t; because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood” (Golding 29). As Jack spent more time on the island, he believed that an agrarian lifestyle was unsustainable, so in an act of desperation, Jack compromised what he believed was morally correct to survive. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The story is placed just after the events of World War II; just as Jack struggled to bring himself to kill, the United States of America found it difficult to morally justify taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, but the United States justified this sacrifice so that the lives of their people would be saved. Just as Jack struggled to justify killing, so did this country, when one’s life is at stake or the lives of the ones that they love anything is justifiable. Jack continues to travel down this path of barbarity and hostility until he loses himself. “‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!”’ (261). Jack, along with all the others, has become so uncivilized and barbaric, that they brutally beat their friend Simon to death. The stress of the island has turned a group of kind-hearted children into cold-blooded murderers. 

Jack’s greed and selfishness are displayed throughout the entire novel. Jack believed that he was the best option to be chief. “‘I ought to be chief, … because I’m chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp.”’ (36) His ego and his arrogance created a sense of entitlement and superiority that he would carry for the duration of the novel. Like Jack, people expect their problems or their concerns to be the center of attention; one’s sense of entitlement comes directly from their own selfishness. Entitlement can be found anywhere today, especially in our celebrity culture, where celebrities believe that people should bow down in their presence. Jack, egotistical and greedy as he is, attempted to put himself in a place of power and take the place of Ralph, by creating the narrative that his job was the most important. “‘This is more than a hunter’s job, because you can’t track the beast. And don’t you want to be rescued?”’ (174) After Ralph expresses that their main objective is to be rescued and anything else should come second, Jack spirals into a fit of rage and creates his own society. His society would go on to be run with the same ideology as Jack, one run by emotion and anger.

Jack’s society was very authoritarian. When he was met with any opposition they were silenced. “‘You shut up!”’ (72) This quote is from earlier in the novel, but demonstrates how Jack has never valued the opinions of others, especially Piggy. Jack used his power to torment and torture his opposition, whether that be Sam, Eric, or Piggy. Jack went on to completely disregard the rules that they created at the beginning of the novel. “‘Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong–we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat–!”’ (155). He expected the rules to be followed by everyone except himself. He was a true dictator. Judging the time when the book was written and where it is placed in time, it wouldn’t be a reach to say that his character was based on one of the three big dictators of the time: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Stalin. Just like these notoriously evil leaders, Jack sacrifices the well-being of his tribe to fuel his need for more and more power. Jack’s view of the littluns as expendable is very similar to the feelings some of these governments had about their general public at the time. Although this is an extreme comparison, Jack joking about hunting the littluns is not much different from Hitler singling out the Jewish for extermination. Jack abused the trust of the others on the island to further his agenda and fuel his hunger for more power.

Jack serves as a great example of how people change when they are put in a tough situation. One gets to know who a person really is in their darkest hour. Jack becomes enthralled in his greed and hunger for power. His obsession with power and control of the island by any means necessary represents just how far people will go to achieve their goals. Jack teaches the readers that humans are driven by their own agenda, their own anger, and their own greed.