Lord of the Flies, at its most basic, is the struggle between two sides of humanity. We have Ralph, who is the epitome of civility, democracy and rationality. Yet there is the flip side of society. Jack Merridew is everything Ralph is not. It's ferocity, it's dictatorship and it's irrationality. Jack highlights Ralph's strengths, through his mistakes and weaknesses. Yet it also shows Ralph's naivety at times. Ralph and Jack complement each other throughout the novel and indeed illuminate the meaning of the work thoroughly. It's civilization versus savagery. They are democracy versus dictatorship. It's rationality versus irrationality. And it's only a matter of time before one of them overwhelms the other. Throughout the novel, Ralph tries to maintain some semblance of order and civilization, like the life they left behind when they crashed. He tries to create rules and order, because as he says "After all, we are not savages." Meanwhile, Jack completely shakes off the shadows of civilization and abandons himself to savagery. As Jack begins to become more and more obsessed with “hunting” and killing a pig, he begins to paint his face. The first time he put on his war paint he had a strange reaction. “He looked in amazement, no longer at himself but at a fantastic stranger. He let out the water and jumped up, laughing excitedly. Next to the pool his muscular body held a mask that attracted their eyes and startled them. His war paint had freed him from constraints, and that's when he really started to go wild. Later in the novel, when Jack creates his group, he is described as "The leader... sitting there, naked to the waist, with his face hidden in the white and... in the middle of the paper..." .he pursues relentlessly his fantasy of killing a pig. He also demonstrates this when he says “Rescue?…I would like to catch a pig first.” Ralph also decides to build shelters in case of bad weather. However, Jack still doesn't listen to any of these rational arguments and remains fixated on the pigs. While Ralph tries to give the boys the best chance of survival, Jack couldn't care less about the job, he just wants to hunt. Ultimately, however, Jack manages to assert his control over the group, through their fear of the beast. . Ralph even asks Jack: "What is better: to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill." Jack convinces the boys to hunt down Ralph and try to kill him. So, in the end, ferocity, irrationality and dictatorship exceed the limits of society. Kids give in to their basic instincts and essentially lose what it means to be human.