Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies depicts a story in which a group of boys who were trapped on an unknown island struggles to keep their civilized morality. The character of Jack in particular, represents the alternation of a human being who not only changes himself, but also transforms the boys into a group of inhuman savages. Jack demonstrates that the shape of society is dependent on each individual, which is the major theme of the novel.

In the beginning, the boys wanted to modify rules and live in peace as well as discipline until they could be rescued. However, Jack was one exception whose only desire was to hunt. After he created his own assembly of hunters, Jack departed from the original leader of the boys--Ralph’s control, and at the same time slowly drifted away from his instinct of civilization.

Jack has had an extreme desire for being leader ever since the beginning of the story. Once he becomes in charge of the hunters, his brutal behaviors and heartless acts set as bad examples for the other boys to follow. The rest of the boys often replicated and found amusement in what Jack did. On top of that, Jack and the boys also enjoyed abusing the sow they hunted, demonstrating their inner violent instinct. Because Jack thought hunting was more important than anything else, he had ruined a chance for the entire group to be rescued in the middle of the story.

Although Jack was afraid to kill the first boar he had encountered, he killed one afterwards and ever since doing so he had became bloodthirsty, and obtained an obsession for slaughtering. This influenced those who followed Jack, who also, developed the same craze over savagery. Towards the mid-end of the book Jack had became responsible for exciting the boys to do their killing dance, bringing a wild savagery state of mind to everyone, and leading the malicious kill of Simon, who was mistaken as a beastie. Jack was so obsessed with murder that he no longer cared what it was that he was killing. He grew more and more vicious as the story continued. By this time Jack was guiltlessly killing humans and conducted his boys to kill Simon on accident. He even demanded Roger to kill Piggy on purpose. Jack even destroyed two out of the only three boys who refused to join his colony.

In order to maintain total control over the boys, Jack used their fear of the beastie as his weapon. He used it as a threat and the reason for the violence, cruelty, and savagery he conducted. After Jack had assembled his hunters and hunted their first sow, he suggested giving the head of a pig to the beastie. By doing so he was assuming that there was definitely a beastie on the island, and such supposition increased the boys’ terror towards the beast. Even after the hunters killed Simon who was thought to be the beastie, Jack told them that terror still remained. He needed to keep fright within the boys to maintain his power and authority.

Jack’s terrible behaviors, obsession with blood and killing, and usage of the boys’ fear to gain control and power resulted in the development of himself as well as the other boys trapped on the island into barbaric savages who have lost their last sense of morality and civilization. The tragedy of the story was created by each boy who had fallen into the human instinct of violence and savagery. With these representations, Golding has proved through his novel that the shape of a society is dependent by nothing but each and every individual that make up the society.