In the book Lord of the Flies, the conflict between humanity’s innate barbarism and the civilizing influence of reason. This natural instinct becomes less and less needed as humans learn through society and change that instinct. But children have only been under this influence for such little time that they have an easier time retrogressing to this instinct. Even in a strict military school in the movie Taps we see that those kids change. Both characters Jack Merridew and David Shawn show their’ true colors when situations call upon their’ intuition.
In the beginning of both the novel and the movie, Jack and David seem to be two of the most disciplined boys. Jack was the leader of a group of choir boys, and David led his group of red berets. Jack was so ingrained with order at one point that he made his choir wear all of their’ garments. On a hot beach they all stood in pants, shoes, shirt, hat, and a cape draped over their’ shoulders, which even cause a boy to faint. Jack didn’t allow the boys to even rest then until he started conversing with a boy named Ralph. From David we notice very similar leadership over his group. He conducted a congratulation salute for a friend for advancing at Bunker Hill academy. He sounded off his boys and controlled all their’ movement.
There were early signs of both Jack’s and David’s natural decisions and a foreshadowing of possible future barbarism. Jack was not chosen to be leader, but was assigned to be a leader of his own group hunters. Like Jack, David was the leader of his red berets. Jack became a new person when assigned the task of ‘Hunter’. Although being a hunter changed him, it was not until his first kill that the real Jack came out. We see similar actions with David. At a dance he got into a brawl with a group of boys harassing
the students, which ended up in the death of a boy who was causing the trouble. This brawl caused a fight later when he was on a mission to get food and supplies for the boys at the...