William Golding's Leadership In Lord Of The Flies

Being a leader is making sure that everything goes smoothly and knowing what's best for the group. I feel like Ralph is capable to do all of this. Ralph had everyone's best interest and not just himself. He listens to what the boys have to say and actually cares about their opinion. Leaders also have to be intelligent. Ralph is indubitably smart. We know this because he had the idea of starting a fire to get rescued for ‘The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going?’(pg. 80). The boys are really petrified and Ralph knew that the only thing that would make them maintained is if they make shelter and he proposes ‘So, we need shelters as a sort of— Home’(pg. 52) This also shows that Ralph knows what is in need of priority. He is able to make the boys all listen to him due to the conche shell. Ralph basically formed a type of orderly government to make sure that everything is going the right way ‘We’ll have to have ’Hands up’ like at school’(pg. 33). This shows that he is natural leader and knows to get things done. Ralph thinks that all the boys should be treated equally especially Piggy since he gets pick on a lot ‘Ralph, looking with more understanding at Piggy, saw that he was hurt and crushed...Better Piggy

Over time there have been many leaders of countries, groups and societies that are believed to be the “best” or what someone could only dream of. However what if a perfect leader doesn’t exist? In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies Ralph’s sense of leadership declines throughout the novel. So what if he doesn’t actually possess the skills the boys had hoped he for.

Ralph's common sense and ability to recognize what is best for the group also shows his excellent leadership skills. His main focus throughout the book is getting rescued and tells the boys to make a fire and to keep it burning to make a signal. However, the boys do not listen and he becomes angry. "The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don't keep the fire going?" (p. 86) Ralph's determination to get rescued is not only for himself, but for everyone else

Ralph cares for the greater good of the group of boys rather than just for himself which signifies one of the traits a leader should have.   Golding tries to show that leadership is an important part of keeping an island civilized and from keeping it stable.  Ralph’s leadership is the only hope the boy’s have to be able to survive on the island while they wait to be rescued.  Ralph's leadership starts to change as he and Jack have a power struggle because he starts to lose faith in himself as well as the boys.  In a sense, it would seem as though Ralph’s leadership was the one to cause the boys to rebel against being civilized because they didn’t want to listen to someone who would tell them what to do when they could do whatever they wanted and become savages without morals.  Ralph’s leadership helps the boy’s civilization have stability.  Leadership relates to the meaning of the work as a whole because leadership is what keeps a civilization from going into ruins, but the boys instinct to do what they want is much greater than that of living a life with rules.

“‘The rules!’ shouted Ralph. ‘You’re breaking the rules!’ ‘Who cares?’ Ralph summoned his wits: ‘Because the rules are the only thing we’ve got!’” (91). In Lord of the Flies, Ralph says this to Jack at one of their assemblies, after having berated the boys for neglecting the shelter building and the signal fires. Ralph’s leadership is built on these rules, and Jack’s breaking of them causes an ideological conflict between them which eventually leads to Ralph’s loss of power among the group. He tries to create a just and orderly society to fulfill their needs and allow them to be rescued, but the boys eventually find Jack’s churlish lethargy and excess to be more desirable. Desirable, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, can be

William Golding, a world-wide known author, transfigured his dream from an English teacher in a small town in England to an author whose books altered the mindset of its readers. Kids and adults have contemplated these words from Lord of the Flies, “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy” (Golding 202). These deep-rooted words from Lord of the Flies, a renowned book written by William Golding, changed him from a locally known author in England to a Nobel Literature Prize Laureate. He won the Nobel prize in 1983 for not only writing many successful selling books, such as Lord of the Flies and Rites of Passage, but in the words of the Nobel committee, he won “…for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today". William Golding’s writing became popular because he incorporated concepts about change in human nature and civilization when war and savagery plagued daily life and society.

There were many imperative themes in the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, but the one that stood out the most was the idea of the difference between a good leader and a bad leader. Jack and Ralph were both critical leaders in the book but had very different ideas of leadership. Ralph for example cared more about escaping the island and making sure everything was on track on the island, while Jack on the other hand was a hunter and wanted to be a complete monarch. Although Jack and Ralph were leaders of their tribes, they both had different point of views which helped shape the theme of leadership that is revealed throughout the story.

Power struggles are a literary theme that has spanned from the early biblical stories like David and Goliath to Beowulf and to more recently Golding's Lord of the Flies. However, instead of the power struggles happening between man and giant, or man and monster, Golding’s struggle is between boys and themselves. Throughout the novel characters Jack and Ralph vie for power over the collective. Each of them represents two distinctly different forms of governance as well as different ways of gaining power.

Ralph displayed strong leadership traits as soon as the flight crashed into a vast, mysterious island. Assuming the responsibility of head chief at the tender age of twelve, he united the boys in order to ensure their survival until help arrived. The boys were divided into groups: there was a group responsible for building shelter, another to tend to the fire, and one to hunt for food. Ralph was a part of all the groups, but he primarily focused on preserving the fire. He was described as having large “width and heavy shoulders” (Golding 10). In order to be in the fire group you must be strong enough to lift heavy branches. Ralph was physically built to handle this job. Another strong leadership attribute Ralph portrayed was positivity. Although his friends usually stayed negative he always stayed positive. In this scene Ralph displays positivity by saying

His leadership manifests in his age, appearance, and disposition. In addition to his leadership ability, Ralph displays positive moral attitudes in his treatment of Piggy and soundness of mind in his emphasis on maintaining the signal fire for rescue. Although the group of boys listens to Ralph in meetings, they do not follow his directives to maintain the signal fire and build shelters. Ralph has superficial leadership in that he can call meetings, but does not hold as much power in terms of real results. Ralph’s inability to cause real action by the group of boys speaks to Golding’s message regarding human nature.

When people are afraid they tend to turn to a higher, stronger, leader. William Golding wrote a novel called The Lord of the Flies. In the middle of a war, a group of schoolboys crash land on an island, there are two leaders. One leader wants more power than the other, which he eventually gets using, fear, manipulation,deception, and violence.

Boom! Pow! Gerrah! These are the sounds that William Golding heard when he landed on the beaches of Normandy. William Golding was a controversial writer during the 20th century writing the famous novel Lord of the Flies.

The year 1930 changed William Golding’s, author of Lord of the Flies, life forever. In this year, Golding started to pursue the study of literature which marked the beginning of this famous author’s career. Golding talked about his experience in war and shared his opinion on society. His past life experiences contributed greatly to his writing. William Golding's experience in war, views on society, and opinion on another book inspired and helped him along the way to write his renowned classic, Lord of the Flies.

People are constantly being placed in demanding situations which vary on severity for each person, but one’s situation is not always similar to a game of Survivor. However, for the boys in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, it is very much so. And when placed in demanding situations, it is important to work together in order to be certain that everyone will thrive. One’s ability to cooperate is revealed through one’s character when threatened. Further, one’s surroundings affect both one’s interpretation of a situation and the measures one will take. Also, one’s commitment to one’s civilization is effortlessly affected by conflict. When there is conflict within a community, the well-being of all who are threatened is impossible to guarantee.

Most may believe that in a state of nature people would organize themselves into groups and choose a higher order. William Golding, author, of Lord of the Flies attended Brasenose College at Oxford University and studied English Literature, after college he taught English and Philosophy at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. His experience in teaching young boys served as inspiration for his novel Lord of the Flies. Approximately ten years after returning, in 1945, Golding published his first novel, Lord of the Flies, after twenty one rejections. In 1940, Golding joined the Royal Navy and fought in World War II. Golding wrote Lord of the Flies to show a savage side of human nature in the perspective of boys getting stranded on an island after their plane crashed. The novel is about boys named Piggy, Ralph and Jack, the main conflicting characters, who find each other after the crash and together form a leadership. From the beginning Jack conflicts against Ralph and ends up breaking from him and the rest of the group. When it comes to Lord of the Flies it is believed that this is the perfect portrayal of people naturally organizing themselves into groups, believing in higher order