I had a conversation with a few friends on discord
The conversation was about whether or not jack would have made a good leader
I was a bit shocked on this I didnt think anyone saw him as a functional leader figure, but I listened non the less because that's how you have conversations.
In todays TedTalk I will be-
I'm going to go over these reasons, and at the end of the post I'll share why I disagree, I encourage the people from the discord to respond and discourse on the matter in a friendly way, the subject changed before I had a chance to share these views the way I wanted to.
I also decided to publicly share this because it's an interesting topic and I truly want to see more opinions on it and hopefully at some point we can even have people who weren't a part of the original conversation add their opinions too, it truly does fascinate me and I want to talk about it.
Anyway onto the reasons they shared.
Jack had experience as a leader
He was master chorister and headboy so he would have had experience as a leader and know how to talk to people
He was able to enforce rules better than Ralph or literally anyone else on the island, which is a key component of leading
He went insane because his lack of control
To word thatbetter, they beleive he went to "feral" (feral is my words not theirs) because he was meant to have a higher role then just hunting chief, and if he had a higher role he would have taken the role seriously. They also believe the reason he only went so feral because he took his job as hunter way too seriously and started losing his morality for this reason.
I would like to mention and enforce the fact that I am in no way trying to be malicious or rude with my responses
He had experience as a leader
True, he did have experience as a leader. But everyone he ever had control of was scared of him or didnt like him. All of the chior boys were either tired of him or scared of him.
In chapter one they followed him without hesitation, and barely got the chance to speak for themselves. They all also felt obligated to vote him for cheif
He didnt have experience talking to a crowd. He had experience manipulating a crowd, which is scary to me.
We wasnt just enforcful he was really mean to people. Anytime piggy tried to speak he would yell at him or insult him, trying to shane him into shutting up.
He wouldnt have only enforced rules he would have punished people who didnt ove them, which he was more than welcome to doing in the beginning when he talked about punishing people, also he punished and tortured his own "Tribe" later on.
He was good at manipulating people and based on the way he treated anyone with differing opinions, he used a certain form of manipulation where you shane someone until they hate themselves so much they feel forced into submission and obedience.
Also the chapter where he yelled at Ralph then ran away crying, is a prime example of gaslighting, meaning that if insulting someone doesnt work, he would pretend to cry or act the victim to make the other person feel guilty.
I've been subject of said manipulation before, so I can say with confidence that jack would fit it.
He went insane because of his lack of control
This one really took me by surprise. Even if all they brought up were true, and that he just wanted to be in more control and lost his mind because he didnt have it, I still think that's bad.
In my opinion if someone goes insane because they cant control others they shouldnt have control over others, that sounds like a dictatorship to me.
Other reasons I didnt cover
If he lead along side ralph he would have done fine
If he worked along side ralph he would constantly have tried to be better than Ralph or have more power, which happened a couple times in the book. And based on the way he treated piggy when piggy tried to speak, if Jack at any point started to like Ralph less he would start shaming and insulting ralph any time Ralph tried to make a change or had an opinion jack didnt like.
He took his job seriously
Yeah I guess he did. And the way they mentioned hunting being the reason he went insane it lost his morality, I just dont agree with that. Just observing the way he acted in chapter 3 when talking about killing, it sounded kind of like middle schoolers when they try to be fake edgy. It sounded less like an actual insane person and more like a kid trying to get a reaction in my opinion.
So in conclusion jack did a lot of things to get reactions and did things to get attention.
And the fact that a lot of the way he acted always seems to come down to other peoples reactions and his need for attention, its probably why he wanted to be chief in the first place, so he could have control over people.
He was meant to be chief in the first place
The only people who voted him to be chief was the chior and they felt forced to do it, the book described it as "the choir raised their hands obediently" and the way it says "obediantly" makes me think jack had some sort of manipulative control over then or they just were scared of him in some way.
Please discourse on this post and give me your responses I want to talk about this more :)
