Character Sketches. Ralph and Jack

Ralph

Ralph is the protagonist in Lord of the Flies. He is a twelve-year old boy, athletic, charismatic, with fair hair and representative of leadership. He is elected “chief” by the group of boys at the beginning of the story. Ralph is mainly focused on being rescued and in surviving. When the boys are investigating Castle Rock, Ralph takes his chef responsibility and goes by himself despite his fear for the “beast”.

 He can be considered as the most mature boy of the group. When Simon dies, he is the only one that recognizes the act as murder. Ralph is the boy with most common sense, and even so, he falls in the savage attitude once when he is pursuing a boar. Ralph is always trying to maintain hope between the boys. Even though he makes a great effort, when Jack makes his own group, most of the boys leave Ralph alone.

Jack

Jack is the antagonist in Lord of the Flies. He represents evil and the dark side of humanity. Jack wants power more than anything. He is the leader of the choir boys; therefore he has experience on having control over people. He expected to be chosen the leader of the group of boys but instead Ralph is chosen chief. This makes Jack angry. At the beginning of the story it seems like Jack was only an aggressive boy even though we can see some tension between him and Ralph. When Ralph gives him control over the choir boys, he decides they will be his “hunters”.

 Jack gets obsessed on hunting a pig after the first time when he saw one and couldn't catch it. The boys came from a civilization in which physical aggression is not accepted. However, Jack realizes there is nothing that can stop him now. He uses the fear the boys had for the beast to control them. Jack learns how to manipulate the kids by telling them how Ralph never gets them meat and he does while in a group meeting. At the end, Jack becomes an evil chief that tortures his group members.