Lord of the Flies - An Examination of Leadership | Lord of the Flies - An Examination of Leadership

In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses his characters to convey the main theme of his novel. The story begins with a war, and nuclear bombs being dropped in Britain. A plane carrying several young boys, who are being evacuated is shot down from the sky. There are no adult survivors, but the boys are brought together, and form a tribe to stay alive. Slowly the condition of the group starts to deteriorate. They are now not only hunting animals, but they are killing each other like savages in order to stay alive. Golding uses his main characters: Ralph, Jack, and Simon to portray how their desire for leadership, combined with lack of compromise eventually leads to the fall of their society.

Ralph, who is the son of a naval officer, is seen as a good looking kid, and likeable to everyone. He is almost immediately elected as the leader of the tribe, with only competition from the leader of the choir boys, Jack. Although Ralph just wants to get home, he remains to look strong to the other boys, and tries to keep things as civilized as possible.

Ralph decides that; "We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything." (Pg. 40). Slowly Ralph began to give in, and act as the others did; "Ralph...was fighting to get near....The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering." (Pg.104).

Jack Merridew, who is the leader of the choir boys (aka. "The Hunters") is a tall, but thin red haired boy. He is the opposite of Ralph, and thrives for the attention of the tribe. Jack, who from the beginning dislikes Ralph, (because he thinks that he could be a better leader), later decides to split from Ralph's tribe, and make his own with the majority of the boys who follow him; "as one wielding a nameless authority" (Pg. 166). Jack is considered to be Ralph's chief nemesis.

Simon, who is another one of the most important people in the novel, is seen as a "Christ" figure. "Then, amid the roar of bees in the afternoon sunlight, Simon found for the littluns, the fruit they could not reach... and passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands." (Pg.51). Although Simon is one of the choir boys, he is made out to be a bit of an outcast. He is the only choir boy that does not become a hunter, and the only person that seems to really care about the well-being of the others on the island. The boys thought of Simon as kind of batty, and Simon finds this out from the Lord of the Flies; "They think you're batty" (Pg. 157). The tribe ends up being the cause of Simon's death, because they think for some reason that he is the beast. The irony about Simon's death is that the people that killed him, are the ones that he had been trying to help the whole time.

The book ends with the deaths of some of the boys on the island, and only one dominating tribe. Ralph's tribe consisted of just him now, and Jack's tribe consisted of everyone else that wasn't dead. "Which is better -- to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is....Which is better -- to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill"" (Pg. 164)

By. Brad H