Acting like a crowd of kids/ the mask was a thin thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness/ He was safe fr… - William Golding

The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

They understood only too well the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought.

"... what makes things break up like they do?"
Piggy rubbed his glasses slowly and thought. When he understood how far Ralph had gone towards accepting him he flushed pinkly with pride.
"I dunno, Ralph. I expect it's him."
"Jack?"
"Jack." A taboo was evolving round that word too.
Ralph nodded solemnly.
"Yes," he said, "I suppose it must be."

..And then — that personal, that wholly isolated direction at the back of your head, that black place from which you looked out on things so that all of those people, even Toni, out there — how could the creature called Sophy who sat there at the mouth of the tunnel behind her belong to anyone but herself? It was all silly. <..> You could choose to belong to people the way the Goodchilds and Bells and Mrs Hugeson did by being good, by doing what they said was right. Or you could choose what was real and what you knew was real — your own self sitting inside with its own wishes and rules at the mouth of the tunnel.

I don't like the word 'allegorical', I don't like the word 'symbolic' - the word I really like is 'mythic', and people always think that means 'full of lies', whereas of course what it really means is 'full of truth which cannot be told in any other way but a story'.