How Do People Abuse The Power In Lord Of The Flies

From historic times until now we see power between people go back and forth. Everyone wants it, but not all can have it. In the book, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Golding shows throughout the story how the weak and the strong take place and how fragile the balance of power can really be through symbolism, imagery and figurative language.

In the book there is conch which gives the beholder of it power over the rest of the group. Jack knows that the group is torn on who should be their leader, so he does whatever is necessary to get the conch and control the group. Jack knows that the only way to do this is to make the group turn against Ralph. With power on his mind his begins to belittle Ralph and make the group think Ralph hasn’t been a good leader. This happens when Jack says, “Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people what to do. You can't hunt, you can't sing” (Golding 238). The group then begins to trust Jack because Ralph seems inferior compared to him. Once Jack has this power he begins to think that everyone who isn’t with him is against him. This leads to Jack killing Piggy to stop and uprising from him and Ralph. There is no way that a 13 year old boy would kill another classmate unless he was fueled with power like Macbeth was. Jack isn’t the only one in the book to let power get the best of him, Ralph also falls victim to it. Ralph begins to disrespect his best friend on the island Piggy when the book says “Ralph pushed Piggy to one side. ‘I was chief and you were going to do what I said’” (Golding 132). This quote shows how Ralph is willing to harm someone he care about just to show everyone including Piggy how powerful he truly is. Both Ralph and Jack let power cloud their judgement which

The power-hungry will often feel the need for absolute control, hardly ever getting what they desire, they will often be portrayed as crazy and vicious. The same can be said for Jack; all he wants is to be the leader and make the decisions, but Ralph is the one in control. Jack’s desire for power is ruining his own image, and the well being of the other boys. Without the supervision of adults his morals and values took a turn for the worst.

Jack is only interested in power, he acts like a dictator and doesn’t follow the communities thoughts. Some actions that Jack takes that shows this are "I got the conch," said Piggy indignantly. “You let me speak!” “The conch doesn’t count on top of the mountain," said Jack, “So you shut up.” This shows how Jack acts like dictator because he doesn’t listen to what the people say. “He's not a hunter. He'd never have got us meat. He isn't a perfect and we don't know anything about him. He just gives orders and expects people to obey for nothing. All this talk-.” This shows how Jack is power hungry and will basically do anything to get it, he is trying to make Ralph look like a bad chief in order for him to try to take the power away from him and get it for himself. “We’ll raid them and take fire. There must be four of you; Henry and you, Robert and Maurice. We'll put on paint and sneak up.” This shows how Jack uses his power to make his tribe members listen to his orders and steal the members of the other tribes. Jack is only interested in power and wants the power for his own

This is shown when the children were voting for chief and Ralph was voted for chief instead of him. “Even the choir applauded, and the freckles on jack’s face disappeared under a blush of mortification.”(Golding 23). After this occurred, the Jack and Ralph always have tension between them. Because Jack is the opposite of Ralph, they always get into constant arguments about how to lead. When Jack started to gain power, the children's savagery starts to lose control and get out of hand. Afterward, the children started to follow Jack and not follow Ralph’s philosophy instead they followed Jack’s. Jack’s philosophy is, manipulate, control, to achieve your goals. Jack uses this philosophy to trick the children to gain control and

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies presents a story of a group of boys who become stranded on an island together, and in their struggle to survive; some begin to fight for power. Having power makes them feel in control of their situation; however, this power struggle quickly begins to consume them. Golding uses the power struggle between Ralph and Jack, the two main characters, to illustrate the power struggle between good and evil.

In our society we have our system for power set up making the understanding of who is in charge easy; However, when the boys are stranded on an island they are forced to come up with their own system, causing rivalries and corrupting rights and values. Before being stranded on an island Jack was an innocent, well-behaved child, however, when thrown into a foreign place with no society and no system of power it is very easy to destroy all of your innocence when obtaining most power. Jack was a hunter and was in charge of all the hunter, he eventually made his own tribe and almost everyone followed him, giving him a mass amount of control. Golding shows that Jack uses his power in ways only beneficial to him, easily seen when the remainder of Ralphs tribe approach Jacks and see him, “ painted up and wearing garland around his neck” (54). Jack uses his power to idolize himself and make the other

Police officers are given a lot of power because it is needed to help protect citizens and the community. However, police often abuse their power by the over use of force, corruption, sexual misconduct, bias based policing, and failure to maintain police ethics. (Peak, 2011)

Jack was a very power hungry young boy.  Although he doesn't have any power at the beginning of the novel, he took every opportunity to take the position of chief and was eventually successful. Jack's dictatorial style of leadership contrasted very directly with the more democratic and passive style of Ralph.  Jack ruled with an iron fist, allowing no one to question him or his leadership. Jack represented the wanting for a single, all-powerful leader to guide the followers of society using any means he feels necessary.

In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, power is a notable theme that can be found very frequently throughout the novel. In the book, the theme of power is found in the form of items that revolve around the protagonist of the story, Ralph, and the antagonist, Jack (Burns 1). Ralph and Jack use these items in order to establish power in the group of boys for their own reasons (Burns 2). With Ralph, he uses items, which represent order in the story, to establish a democracy on the island, while Jack uses specific items that represent evil to create a monarchy out of Ralph’s democracy (Burns 1). The items used by Ralph and Jack in Golding’s novel will be later explained in the essay on how they represent power, what their meaning is, and their purpose in the story.

Lord of the Flies is an extraordinarily well-written novel that teaches one how to live life. When asked about the philosophy of the book, the author, William Golding, replied, "The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectful." This completely exemplifies the theme of the novel. Lord of the Flies truly shows that it is not the government that determines survival, it is the sheer human nature in all of us that proves whether a society can function. A person's personality will always trump another person's because of difference

I don’t know why,” (Golding, 82). In addition, the author of Lord of the Flies uses the theme that people abuse unearned power, which shows people that there will always be a leader, and that leader will not care about the people he is ruling over. Ralph and Jack were just put into leadership roles without doing much, and since then, many negative events had occurred. Those negative events had been caused by the misconduct of power. “Jack held out his hand for the conch,” (Golding, 35). Jack had wanted to be in power over Ralph, even though he had not won the vote, so he kept trying to abuse the small amount of power that he did have. Jack was very power hungry and didn’t care what precautions he had to take in order to gain power. “And you shut up! Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people what to do,” (Golding, 91). Jack had been very upset with Ralph for trying to suggest different ideas than what he had wanted, and Jack felt that he was the better leader over Ralph. Thus, Jack was using the power that he had to try and dominate over Ralph. Leaders arise in everything and some of them use their power to benefit

Every human comes to face the ugliness of injustice. The character of each individual has significant impact affecting the way they handle cases of unfairness. In the adventure novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding brings to life ideas that the self respect a character possesses will directly influence the manner he handles inequality.

In the classic book the Lord of the Flies by William Golding Ralph, the protagonist, is portrayed as an idealist who should not have had the role of power. First of all when leaders, like Ralph, don’t give their people a voice it can have consequences that they weren’t expecting. Secondly there were significant obstacles that came with power that Ralph didn’t expect. Finally when reading the book Lord of the Flies, I learned exactly what not to do when put in a leadership role.

Abandoning the power is totally because of civilization. As we get to the end of the novel, humanity are losing among it people on the Island, “Samneric were savages like the rest; Piggy was dead, and the conch smashed to powder” (186). Jack overthrew everyone because of his power, they all became savage, their humanity left them, they now have the urge to kill, and they do not care if people die. As Piggy died, the power of the conch also goes with him. His death doesn’t affect them. They just care whom to kill. They now follow the order of their leader, thinking the conch as the past memory that helps them to create their personality. As the conch dies power, the replacement corrupted the power. Jack’s creates his own rules and regulations.