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Who Is Ralph's Leadership In Lord Of The Flies

1234 Words5 Pages

Shawn Murphy
Mrs. Lance
English 10 Honors
07 March 2023
Compelling Leadership in Lord of the Flies Harmony and order in society can only be achieved through great leadership, an important quality in both fictitious and real-world settings. The novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, presents this effective guidance through Ralph, the figurehead of children who focuses on logical and beneficial long-term decision-making. Throughout the book, he demonstrates various leadership qualities that assist the boys in being rescued from the stranded island, simultaneously vying for power over a tyrannical dictator who manipulates the boys into savagery. Despite the odds being against Ralph, he perseveres through multiple obstacles, determined …show more content…

It is shown throughout the book that Ralph competes with Jack for power. Throughout Lord of the Flies, Jack manipulates the group onto his side, leaving Ralph with only a few kids in support of himself. Nevertheless, he continues to persevere through Jack’s competition. This is presented towards the end, after Jack had harassed Ralph’s group, they continued to set off to reason with Jack about the spectacles, depicted as, “They set off along the beach in formation. Ralph went first, limping a little, his spear carried over one shoulder.” (Golding 173) Ralph is at the disadvantage, being physically wounded and having a smaller member count in his tribe, however, he leads the boys over to Jack’s side. Ralph exhibits resilience by pushing through the backlash Jack confronts him with constantly, and having this enables Ralph’s group to be determined to succeed, ultimately showing Ralph’s great leadership. Likewise, Ralph also indicates strong determination in the sense that he wants to escape, and during the whole of Lord of the Flies does he not stop mentioning the fire- the gateway to their escape. From the creation of the fire, Ralph has put numerous efforts into maintaining the smoke, from scheduling the choir boys to guard the fire, to attempting to get piggy’s specs back to light the fire again. His obsession with fire demonstrates strong determination and allows him to represent excellent leadership by delivering strive toward success. Furthermore, Ralph symbolizes guidance through hope and motivating the boys. Ralph has shown to deliver hope to the boys multiple times, once illustrated through worrying about being rescued off the island in the beginning. The boys are distraught because they’re on an unknown island, questioning who’ll save them, and Ralph reassures them by

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These boys, Jack and Ralph, both fight for dominance during this novel, whilst grappling with their egos and desires. Ralph is the superior leader in, “Lord of the Flies,” due to his prioritizing the group’s welfare and emphasizing reason over primal instinct. Ralph's leadership prioritizes the group's welfare, he says “We've got to have special people for looking after the fire. Any day there may be a ship out there... ”(Golding 33)

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In the Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of British boys are stranded on an uninhabited island and try to govern themselves. The leader of the group is Ralph, the main representative of order, civilization, and productive leadership. Ralph exhibits the traits of an excellent leader throughout the novel by being kind, responsible, and determined. Because of the aforementioned traits, the boys feel safe and even hopeful about being rescued.

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He oversees a plan to help them escape their entrapment on the island, while still being a child himself. He does not shift management because of the difficult position the boys and him have found themselves in. Ralph conducts a way to persevere through hardship no matter the challenge. Ralph ultimately steps up to the chief role and proves he is the greatest suit for the upcoming

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“The Word, that understandable and lawful Word, was slipping away.” (Golding 82). Ralph, the original leader of the boys in the Lord of The Flies, is initially a great leader and person. Ralph soon becomes pulled by his desires, a recurring theme of human nature seen frequently. Ralph experiences a man vs. societal conflict due to Jack’s influence but is resolved through the arrival of the long-awaited Naval officer.

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Jack shares Ralph’s stubbornness and good-natured personality while Sayid and Ralph are shown to prioritize their leadership by using organization and prioritizing. One of the characteristics that helped Ralph survive on the island for as long as he did was his determined and stubborn personality towards civilization and order. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph showed his determined characteristic by upholding his position as the chief of the group of boys. “‘Let’s stay here-’ ‘Back to the shelter-’ ‘I’m tired-’ ‘No!’

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Also, when Ralph and Piggy are deciding whether or not to climb the mountain, Piggy says, “And I think I could tell you what Ralph’s going to say next. The most important thing on the island is the smoke and you can’t have no smoke without a fire.” (Golding 129). Ralph is so passionate about the importance of the fire, that Piggy can even guess what he is going to say when faced with certain dilemmas. It shows how adamant Ralph has been throughout the book about keeping the fire going in order to get rescued.

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This reveals that even though Ralph wants to get rescued, he needs the help of the other boys to contribute to that. Ralph is getting irritated with Jack because he let the fire go out for their rescue. This reveals the start of Ralph’s and Jack’s argument, which commenced because Jack let the fire go out, when he was the one in charge of watching the fire. Ralph decides to build a fire signal for their rescue, however the fire grows out of control. This reveals that even though the boys were smart enough to start a fire signal for their rescue, they are still young boys that probably didn’t know the full knowledge of making a fire, which caused the fire to grow out of control.

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Ralph tries to keep others hopeful so they don’t give up. A quote to support this is, As Piggy tells Jack, "You got your small fire all right"(pg.45 Golding). This fire soon becomes a symbol of hope and rescue temporarily for the time being. Ralph is also a lot more civilized then half the boys on the island. He doesn’t let the island get to him and effect his mental state as much as some other boys.

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Ralph’s meaning of power is unique to that of Jack, Piggy, and the littluns, hence his escape from the island’s corruption despite the deaths of Piggy & Simon. His initial desire to start the fire is a representation of maintaining hope, ironically because the fire, which was created by Jack, allowed for their survival. Therefore, Jack’s attempt to defeat Ralph’s characteristic of integrity managed to only find the success of Ralph. It is evident that because of his strength, Ralph is

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Ralph’s main focus is to keep the fire going so that passing ships will see the smoke resulting in the boys getting rescued. Jack's love for hunting pigs and lack wanting to get rescued show that he is turning more savage by the day. This is just another reason why Ralph would make a better leader than Jack would. This also shows that Ralph has better priorities than Jack does. The boys first reaction

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Throughout the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the leader of the fight to keep and maintain the fire, but he is starting to give up hope and lets the fire die. Lastly, fire symbolizes hope during the end of the novel. Jack and most of the other boys have turned on Ralph and want to “hunt” him. They decided that the best way to get Ralph to come to them on the beach was to light the whole forest on fire so Ralph would be forced out to the beach. Ralph was trying to run out of the forest as “the roar of the forest rose to thunder and a tall bush directly in his path burst into a great fan-shaped fan.

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Near the end of the novel, Ralph explains, “This was the first time he had admitted the double function of the fire. Certainly one was to send up a beckoning column of smoke, but the other was to be a hearth now and a comfort until they slept.” (Golding 191). Ralph can be seen admitting that he is frightened, or worried about something, but the fire is bringing him comfort because it seems to be the only thing that he can truly control anymore. He has not been able to control the rest of the island of boys ever since he lost most or all of his power to Jack.

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Then the fact that Jack was leading a dictatorship. Also that Ralph’s style of leadership is better then Jack’s. There are various types of leaderships evident in Lord of the Flies, Ralph’s being a democratic leadership. Ralph felt that getting rescued was the most important thing on the island. We can see this with his persistence in always keeping

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Ralph’s behavior through the novel shows that his attitude changed the culture oftenly. In chapter five during the assembly with all of the boys Ralph states, “ The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going? Is a fire too much for us to make” (Golding, pg.80). The author conveys illustrates that the boys aren’t working hard enough on the task of making a signal fire so they’d all be able to go home refers to the boy's desire to be on their own and be in charge of themselves.

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Jack´s need to be in control leaves him causing fights with Ralph, most usually resulting from Jack’s stubborn nature. Ralph lept to his feet. “Jack! Jack!

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