What is power in Lord of the Flies, for an essay for the prompt is, "What is power in LOTF?" (not who has power)?

William Golding's Lord of the Flies
is an allegory written in response to a Victorian novel, R. M.
Ballantyne's Coral Island, in which civilized  British boys on a
island triumph over the indigenous savages.  On the contrary, in Golding's novel, the
boys stranded on the island behave "as boys would."  For, Golding's novel depicts the
overriding savagery inherent in human nature.  This savagery represented by Jack and the
hunters overtakes the conditioning and reason of society, represented by Ralph and
Piggy.

Power in Golding's narrative is represented by
fire. When Jack and the hunters steal Ralph's fire, the theft is suggestive of the
mythological story in which Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to man,
thus unleashing violence and chaos among the mortals. In Jack's possession, the fire no
longer represents rescue and an act of responsibility in its maintenance; instead, it
becomes symbolic of authority just as the conch has been. In Chapter Eight, for Jack the
power of the conch no longer exists. Fire, instead, is power, and with it the boys are
able to roast the pigs that they capture and kill. In addition, Jacl uses fear of the
beast to terrorize the others and get them to submit to him. So, power is often composed
of tyrannical actions.

While Jack conquers Ralph's group,
conscripting them through the use of force issued by the sadistic Roger, Ralph does
attempt to assert himself against Jack earlier in Chapter Six as he defends the
importance of the conch and orders Jack to sit down. He claims that Jack only wants to
hunt and has forsaken the importance of getting rescued. Reemphasizing the importance of
the fire, Ralph gains support and he says,

readability="10">

"Don't you all want to be rescued? ...the fire
is the main thing...

"Hasn't anyone got any sense?  We've
got to relight that fire.  You never thought of that, Jack, did you?  Or don't any of
you want to be
rescued?"

Ralph maintains his
role of responsibility for a time, but when Jack later steals the fire and,
symbolically, the conch is broken, Ralph no longer is a leader because he lacks
the power to lead.