Monday, August 7, 2017

How does Jack manipulate the boys in "Lord of the Flies"?

plays
emotion in order to manipulate the
boys. andrepresent reason in the story, and try to reason
with the boys by
explaining the "truths", as they see them - the importance of the
fire, the
unlikeliness of the beast, etc..  However, Jack, as the symbol of emotion and

instinct, is ultimately more effective in the end, as we see in the breakdown of
civilization
upon the island.

The two emotions that Jack
focuses on the most are
excitement and fear.  The first he uses is
excitement.  He leads his choir boys into a hunting
party because hunting is
fun and exiciting.  It is primal, and it makes the heart pump.  The
boys
relish the adrenaline.  Even Ralph is pulled in by the excitment of the hunt.  After
he
hits the pig with the spear, he gets so caught up in the excitment that he
boasts:


"I hit him all right. The spear
stuck in. I wounded him."
 He sunned himself in their new respect and felt
that hunting was good after all.


In
the end, the boys turn the hunt into a play, and use Robert as
the "pig."  It
is this that eventually turns Ralph off, because he notices in himself
his
own desire to get at Robert, who ends up crying and hurt.  However, in all, the boys
are
enjoying their "games" and will remain loyal to jack for the
excitment.


Back at camp, Jack uses the emotion of fear as
a manipulation technique.  When Ralph
tries to emphasize the need for the
fire, Jack plays up the horror of the "beast" to
insist that there needs to
be more focus on hunting and less on the fire.  He scares the
littleuns into
hysterics, and Ralph loses control of the meeting, as Jack had

planned.

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