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Lord of the Flies critical analysis
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Lord of the Flies critical analysis
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As kids grow up they are always told they need to be leaders and that they should not be followers, but kids are typically never taught how to handle someone else trying to challenge their leadership. In Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, this exact dilema is put into play. An older boy named Ralph attempts to step up and lead stranded children in a struggle for survival, but as the story unfolds another older boy, Jack, who also becomes quite the hunter, attempts to take control of the group of boys. The battle for control ultimately ends with Jack taking the majority of the power and leaving Ralph with only a few kids to look over. Jack may have taken control of the smaller kids simply by making his “tribe” more appealing with …show more content…
fun and games, but Ralph is actually the better leader. First, one thing that supports this thought is that Ralph, throughout the story, strongly prioritizes his plans. He wants the fire, the boys only signal for help, to continue for as long it can and gets extremely upset whenever it goes out. Jack, however, is okay with letting it go out. In the story Jack and Ralph get into an argument, “Ralph spoke. ‘You let the fire go out.’ Jack checked, vaguely irritated by this irrelevance but too happy to let it worry him” (Golding 69). Jack sees the fire as an irrelevance and is irritated when he is confronted about it. He also is to happy about possibly killing an animal and he just doesn't care about the fire. Ralph, on the other hand, does show care for the fire as he clearly confronts Jack aggressively about it. Jack also shows his lack of an ability to prioritize when he goes hunting once again instead of helping other boys with shelters. The boy already had fruit to eat, so obtaining meat should not have been the priority. It is shown that only Ralph and Simon were working on the shelters when Ralph states, “D’you see? All day I’ve been working with Simon. No one else” (Golding 50). Jack is clearly only dead set on obtaining meat, despite the boys already having food and water. As the boys already have everything that is necessary for nutrition needs all they needs is a proper place to rest and stay warm. Only a true leader would know what is best for the boys, like how Ralph understands that boys need shelter more than they needs meat. Another point that supports the idea that Jack is a worse leader is that he resembles a lot of different brutal dictators.
One brutal bad dictator Jack resembles is Benito Mussolini. History.com explains how Mussolini had a lot of aggression as a young kids, “At age 10 he was expelled from a religious boarding school for stabbing a classmate in the hand, and another stabbing incident took place at his next school” (Greenspan 1). Jack also has a lot of aggression as shown in chapter ten when Jack is said to have had a kid tied up because he wanted him tied up, “‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. He got angry and made up tie Wilfred up. He’s been’ - he giggled excitedly- ‘he’s been tied up for hours, waiting’” (Golding 159). A person who just beats people because he wants too and doesn’t have a just reason for doing so should definitely not be a leader. Jack being a person to do something a terrible dictator would only sets him up to fail if he intends to be a leader. Ralph however shows high correlations to George Washington, one of the greatest and most notable leader in history. According to Virginia.edu “The overall impression that many people have today, therefore, is that while Washington was a person of the highest moral character, he did not possess a first rate intelligence and he got most of his ideas from others, such as Franklin, Mason, Henry, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison” (Stazesky 1). Ralph, similar to George Washington, Ralph didn’t possess top notch intelligence …show more content…
and also got several ideas from Piggy throughout the book. If Ralph can relate so strongly to a wonderful leader he should almost instantly be defined as the better leader compared to Jack. In spite of Jack being close to a terrible leader and not being able to prioritize, he does keep things fun on the side of the boys, as well as he keeps the boys fairly well fed with pigs and meat.
Although the kids might have been having a fun time, it proved to go to far and turn the boys into savages. Several deaths appeared because the boys had to much fun and felt as if there were no rules. Piggy’s and Simon’s are both results of the idea that there are no rules that the boys develop well on the “fun” side. As for the food, the boys already had fruit and fresh water. There was virtually no point in getting the meat. Jack’s only few points as to why he would make a better leader than Ralph are all flawed in the sense that they make the boys savages or they do not help the boys at
all. All in all Ralph, obviously, would make the better leader for the boys as he has a leadership style similar to one of the greatest leader in history, George Washington, and Ralph has the ability to proper prioritize what the boys truly need over what they simply want. Jack would, by far, be the worse leader as he possess an aggression similar to a terrible cruel dictator. He also has little to nothing that he can actually offer the boys. Children obviously need to be taught how to choose a decent leader, because in The Lord of The Flies they chose exceptionally poorly.
Both Ralph and Simon did not think the ideas of Jack and the rest of the children were very good because their ideas involved bad choices and horseplay. In the novel, Golding writes, “Piggy urges Ralph to blow the conch shell and summon the boys back
In Lord of the Flies the moral is teaching you that man can go mad no matter what age. The kids start trying to build a society after they crashed landed on an island. The way they choose their leader doomed them from the start, Ralph finds a shell and declares him the ruler. There’s a famous saying, “power makes man corrupt.” This holds true in this story. After arguments with other people in the tribe about his ruling situation a sort of revolution erupts. This leads to the boys going back to the savage days of survival-of-the-fittest. The ones with most power start taking in kids as slaves showing how getting the advantage of power made them enslave their own friends. The story isn’t set back in the 1800s either when slavery was tolerated,
Leadership is a trait that many people have naturally and others try to obtain. Many people consider themselves a good leader when they fail to carry out the characteristics leadership require. In the book, “Lord of the Flies”, Ralph is a better leader than Jack because of the traits he possesses. That is why certain skills are necessary to be considered a successful leader.
The books Lord of the Flies and The Chocolate War both have children in that awkward spot of authority with the twists of different settings, situations, and conflicts. While there is hope for everything to work out for the children in the books, eventually it turns out to be a struggle for them in the end. Children are not mature enough to make the decisions to be in charge of their own lives, they need guidance and the wisdom from adults with life experience. Even with the presence of an adult, children with authority can cause many problems and chaos to be aroused. Coming to a conclusion, children do not deserve this authority until they have
Ralph shows that he has a better understanding of the boys than Jack. He knows that the boys need some sort of order on the island in order for them to survive. He starts a simple form of government and sets a few rules for them. Even though they don’t last very long, the fact that he tried to help the group is what makes him a better leader. Ralph’s wisdom and ability to look toward the future also has an advantage over Jack. He has a sense to keep his focus on getting off the island. When the fire goes out, Ralph gets upset because the chance to be rescued was gone as well. Ralph enforces his role of leadership as he gives the boys a sense of stability of an authority figure. He keeps the boys in pretty good order at the meeting by making a rule that they can only speak if they have the conch. Ralph knows that the littleuns are afraid and they need shelter to feel more secure. They work together for a while, but as the time goes on the smaller boys want to go play. They slowly lose all their help until Simon and Ralph are the only ones left to work on them. Ralph knows that this is a necessity and keeps bringing it up at the meetings. Jack, on the other hand, is doing nothing but causing chaos.
“I cannot believe there is caste system in society; I cannot believe people are judged on the basis of their prosperity.” No matter how much you’ve got to bring to the table, society will always find a way to put you down and aim for something else whether that something is worst or better than what you have to offer. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding has shown this external conflict several times throughout the story with characters such as Ralph and piggy. The conflict of character vs. society is present in these characters: Ralph, the elected chief of the group of British schoolboys is constantly having to remind the group of the bigger picture; Piggy, ultimately the brain of the
In William Golding’s novel, the Lord of the Flies, even though Ralph became chief of the stranded boys, Jack eventually rose to power through scare tactics, confidence, determination, and control. When Jack demonstrated his leadership skills, it was evident that he was superior to Ralph and would use his sense of Social Darwinism (survival of the fittest) and his oratory skills to surpass and isolate Ralph completely. Regardless of Ralph’s strengths, such as his conch, democratic maneuvers, firm motives, and kind demeanor, Jack’s mere presence ousted Ralph’s chances of taking effective leadership. By using propaganda against Ralph, gaining support from his partisan tribe members, and overpowering Ralph through his persuasive techniques and appearance, Jack clearly demonstrated how his leadership of the island was inevitable.
There are always people who, in a group, come out with better qualities to be a leader than others. The strongest people however, become the greater influences which the others decide to follow. However, sometimes the strongest person is not the best choice. Authors often show how humans select this stronger person to give an understanding of the different powers that people can posses over others.
In conclusion, Jack was overall an unique leader and person, he went from killing pigs to killing humans, and being the nicest person, to not so nice. With great power comes great responsibility; having determination, being intelligent, and possessing great outdoors skills, is what Jack had to be, to be a great
... Ralph has proven to have a much better understanding of people and their needs and this makes him a much better leader than Jack. With Ralph's understanding of the need for order and rules, he improves the condition where the boys are living in. Jack's condition was horrible. Also, Jack treated the boys very badly and like he better. Ralph, on the other hand treated the boys all equally and with respect. Ralph's priority to get off the island shows his wisdom and ability to make good decisions. Although Jack was popular on the island for the short amount of time the boys were there, he would not have been popular for much longer. He does not have any of the qualities that a good leader should have and turned himself and the rest of the boys into complete losers. Jack's plan would have soon faded but if Ralph had become leader, his wisdom would last much longer.
The first two kids are considered leaders but only to the littluns who really do not matter in the big picture. To the bigguns, Simon is just a silent and, 'batty'; kid who is called odd the entire story. Until he thinks he sees the beast everyone ignored him and when this happens he's running to tell all the boys that he had seen the beast and when they see him coming they mistake him for the beast and stab him repeatedly until he is dead. Simon is really just misunderstood because Ralph thinks he is a big help. As he says in the story, 'Simon, he helps.'; Ralph is referring in this quote to the building of the shelters. The only people who work to get shelters from the rain are Ralph, Piggy, and Simon. Now Piggy did not stand a chance from the beginning. When they first get on the island all everyone does is make fun of him and that does not stop until his death in the end of the story. The thing that the others do not notice is that Piggy is a smart kid who knows what he is doing.
All of the “savages” in Lord of the Flies lust for power—it is in human nature to crave someone in charge (Spitz 24). For this reason the events in Golding’s novel are built around forming a hierarchy (Lederer and Beattie 1319). From the very first page, Ralph is over Piggy, and then over the entire tribe with Jack over the choir, then Jack is over the entire tribe (Lederer and Beattie 1319). Almost immediately the boys revert to a power struggle in trying to decide a chief (Egan 140). Even though “what intelligence was shown was traceable to Piggy” and “the most obvious leader was Jack,” Ralph is chosen as chief (Golding 22).
age by being more interested in having fun than working. Secondly, all the boys leave Ralph's hard-working group to join Jack's group who just want to have fun. The day after the death of Simon when Piggy! and Ralph are bathing, Piggy points beyond the platform and says, "That's where. " they're gone. Jack's party. Just for some meat. And for hunting. pretending to be a tribe and putting on war paint. " (163). Piggy realizes exactly why the boys have gone to Jack's, which would be fun. excitement. The need to play and have fun in Jack's group, even though The boys risk the tribe's brutality and the chance of not being rescued.
In Lord Of The Rings, Tolkien shows that power corrupts, but absolute power corrupt defenitley, and this is shown through corruption, abuse and temptation. The characteristics of an Evil are the desire for absolute power and thats a central theme in Lord Of The Rings. The desire of absolute power to defeat and ruin.