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Ralph And Jack's Leadership In Lord Of The Flies

Decent Essays

In the Novel, Lord Of The Flies there are two clear leaders of the population of kids on the island, which are Jack Merridew and Ralph. To fully analyze who was the best leader, we need to know what a good leader is. Both Ralph and Jack were leaders and it is arguable to which is the better leader. These leaders represent the kind of leaders that appear in our world because of their wildly different characteristics. In all, these two leaders pursue leadership in completely different ways, but that does not make them bad leaders. A good leader is someone with certain characteristics that make them good at leading. For example, “If you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise. And then the occasion slipped by so you had to grab at a …show more content…

For example, “We have lots of assemblies. Everyone enjoys speaking and being together. We decide things. But they don't get done,” and then Ralph tells them what to do, and ends with “Now you do what I say.” This shows that Ralph was able to put his foot down and make people do what he wanted at the moment and he made do his lists of demands. In contrast, Jack had the threat of violence to make people do what he wanted, which is a sign of strong leadership, but not moral leadership, as shown by them tieing up SamnEric in Chapter 11. To explain, Jack’s leadership is not a healthy and stable leadership, because he incites fear into all of his followers and usually that leads to an uprising. However, Jack manages to keep everyone around him alive with food from him hunting with his hunters, and killing and roasting pigs in the fire, while Ralph showed that he did not really help much in getting everyone food, as he was busy with other things, making his followers have to hunt and gather, instead of supplying them with food. This portrays that Jack was better at supplying food to his people than Ralph, but however, Ralph was building and helping them survive in different ways other than food. To conclude, Ralph was better qualified to be a leader because he knew how to think, as well as having people do things he wanted by choice instead of being forced to, so he was the better leader

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