As Donald H. McGannon says, “Leadership is action, not position.” In the novel The Lord of the Flies, author William Golding shows how one boy, named Ralph, takes action from the beginning and is proven to be the best leader on the island in the end. Even though Jack takes control at the end of the novel, Ralph would overall make the best leader.
At the end of the novel Jack takes control over the boys through force and leaves Ralph to fight for himself. Ever since the beginning Ralph is the leader of the boys and then Jack starts to be seen trying to establish order. For instance, at one point Jack and Ralph argue over who called the meeting. “I’ve called the assembly,’ said Jack,’ because of a lot of things. First of all you know now, we’ve seen the beast. We crawled up. We were only a few feet away. The beast sat up and looked at us. I don’t know what it does. We don’t even know what it is” (125). Jack is leading the discussion and he addresses the fears of the boys, which shows that he is trying to win them over. He is starting to do things that Ralph would normally do. Jack also falsely accuses Ralph of things that he did not actually say just to make him look mean. “I’ve got the conch. Ralph thinks you a
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One of the only reasons they follow Jack is because they fear his power. We’ll have to have ‘hands up’ like at school” (33). This shows that Ralph truly cares about taking care and leading all of the boys on the island. re cowards, running away from the boar and the beast. In the end Ralph’s genuine intelligence is confirmed to be dominant when they are rescued only because of one of his brilliant ideas. First of all him having the conch shows that he is taking order. Since the other boys are more concerned about taking advantage of their freedoms without parents, Ralph’s ideas of being rescued are overridden by Jack’s appealing savage ideas. In order to be rescued he knows that their needs to be one specific person to keep everyone in line. Now that Ralph is alone and has no control over anything, it is clear that Jack has completely taken over. Ralph also has physically characteristics about him that would make one want him to lead them. Ralph is trying to establish civilization on this uncivilized island by using ideas from their normal everyday lives. Next Ralph calls meetings to discuss many various problems that they are having and to establish rules. Ralph’s physical and mental characteristics make him predominantly the best leader there is on this island. The boys have to decide about being rescued and Ralph says, “Seems to me we ought to have a chief to decide things” (22).
Approximate Word count =
859
Approximate Pages =
3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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