Jack Merridew's Leadership

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In the novel, “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, leadership is best represented by the Conch and Jack. The conch represents a democracy, and Jack represents dictatorship. One way the conch shows a democracy-like leadership is, whoever has it seems to be in charge of all the others. The text models such when Piggy said, after being told to shut up, “‘I got the conch! [...] I got a right to speak’” (Golding 44). He shows being in possession of the conch gives him all rights to everyone’s ears at that moment. Also “Ralph waved the conch” to get everyone’s attention, using it as a ‘universal symbol’ (Golding 35); almost telling everyone that he is in charge, so they must listen to him. One more example of the conch’s leadership in this story …show more content…

He acted powerfully, and he placed fear into the other islanders hearts. Where Jack enters the story, the text states, “Piggy asked no names. He was intimidated by this uniformed superiority and the offhand authority in Merridew’s voice” (Golding 21). This is an example of the automatic fear that struck the others at his moment of arrival in the story that seemed to carry out through the entirety of the story, and possibly even intensified closer to the end. Again, Jack strikes fear when he makes conversation about hunting- which ends up overtaking him completely by the end of the book, “All the same you need and army- for hunting. Hunting pigs-’” (Golding 32). Although he is talking about hunting for food, this quote has an eerie feeling to it, almost as though he is a little too excited to create his own army just for hunting; could this possibly be his first display of extreme power that transformed into hunger for it as the story progressed? One last example of Jack’s dictatorship is when he cries excitedly, “‘We’ll have rules!’” (Golding 33). He seems to want to force everyone to follow him in this section of the story by making rules that everyone must follow; This is also ironic because he is also the first to start disobeying them when he realizes that they are not what he wants so he can gain that full lead, or dictatorship, he strives to ‘achieve.’ In conclusion, the Conch and Jack both are examples of, very different, leadership in the story “The Lord of the Flies”. One is a display of dictatorship, and the other is

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