Chap­ter 3: In Lord of the Flies, Chap­ter 3, Jack becomes ful­ly immersed in the wilder­ness, dri­ven by a pri­mal need to hunt and dom­i­nate the envi­ron­ment. He moves through the thick jun­gle, his sharp eyes scan­ning the ground for any signs of pigs. Each clue, from the twist­ed creep­ers to the fresh ani­mal drop­pings, draws him deep­er into the hunt, high­light­ing his grow­ing obses­sion. The change in Jack since his arrival on the island is stark, as he becomes more wild, shed­ding his for­mer sense of order and embrac­ing his baser instincts. This pur­suit of hunt­ing con­sumes him, cre­at­ing a notice­able rift between his pri­or­i­ties and those of the oth­er boys, par­tic­u­lar­ly Ralph. The chap­ter under­scores Jack­’s increas­ing focus on the thrill of the hunt, reveal­ing his descent into sav­agery as the boys’ strug­gle for sur­vival inten­si­fies.

Mean­while, Ralph and Simon are left behind, grap­pling with the phys­i­cal real­i­ty of their sit­u­a­tion. The boys’ task of build­ing shel­ters is cru­cial for their sur­vival, but Ralph’s frus­tra­tion builds as he notices the lack of par­tic­i­pa­tion from the oth­er boys, espe­cial­ly the younger ones, who show lit­tle inter­est in the labor. The shel­ters are quick­ly falling apart, a sym­bol of their dete­ri­o­rat­ing uni­ty and the boys’ grow­ing indif­fer­ence to their respon­si­bil­i­ties. Ralph, bur­dened by the weight of the group’s sur­vival, feels increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed as the oth­er boys, led by Jack, focus sole­ly on hunt­ing. His strug­gle to keep the group unit­ed and func­tion­ing becomes more pro­nounced, as he real­izes that his lead­er­ship is being over­shad­owed by Jack’s allure of pow­er and the free­dom that hunt­ing rep­re­sents. This chap­ter high­lights the grow­ing ten­sion between Ralph’s ide­al­is­tic vision of coop­er­a­tion and Jack’s pri­mal desire for con­trol and dom­i­nance.

Simon, in con­trast, rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent approach to their cri­sis. While Ralph and Jack engage in their pow­er strug­gles, Simon steps back from the chaos, offer­ing his help to the lit­tluns, a ges­ture that shows his nur­tur­ing side. He qui­et­ly gath­ers fruit, tak­ing care of the younger boys and pro­vid­ing them with a sense of sta­bil­i­ty. Simon’s intro­spec­tive nature leads him to seek refuge in the for­est, away from the grow­ing con­flict between the oth­er boys. There, in a seclud­ed spot sur­round­ed by creep­ers, Simon finds a peace­ful place that sym­bol­izes his con­nec­tion to nature and his retreat from the esca­lat­ing ten­sions. The calm he finds in this qui­et spot is a stark con­trast to the tur­moil around him, and it becomes clear that Simon, unlike the oth­ers, seeks solace in the nat­ur­al world rather than the chaot­ic pow­er strug­gles that are unfold­ing. His with­draw­al from the group’s dra­ma fur­ther empha­sizes his iso­la­tion, both phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly, as he begins to real­ize the depth of the boys’ descent into chaos.

Jack’s increas­ing desire for dom­i­nance and his refusal to adhere to Ralph’s struc­tured lead­er­ship lead to a sig­nif­i­cant shift in the dynam­ics of the group. His insis­tence on hunt­ing and his grow­ing dis­re­gard for the need to build shel­ters reveal his trans­for­ma­tion from a boy seek­ing order to one embrac­ing vio­lence and pow­er. This desire for con­trol marks a turn­ing point, as the boys begin to divide into fac­tions, with Jack at the helm of those who aban­don civ­i­liza­tion in favor of pri­mal instincts. The chap­ter marks the first real indi­ca­tion that Ralph’s attempts to main­tain order and civil­i­ty are slip­ping away as Jack’s allure grows stronger. The themes of sur­vival, fear, and pow­er are explored in this chap­ter, as the boys’ pri­or­i­ties shift toward the imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion of hunt­ing, lead­ing to an inevitable clash between order and chaos. The break­down of soci­etal norms is pal­pa­ble, and the boys’ grad­ual descent into sav­agery becomes unavoid­able.