‘Lord of the Flies’ can be interpreted as an examination of different styles of leadership,
with the democratic leader Ralph coming up against the totalitarian leader Jack.
Let’s start with Ralph’s style of leadership.
Ralph wants everyone to have an equal voice, explaining ‘We’ll have to have ‘Hands
up’ like at school’ in chapter 2.
He wants to put things to a vote, and represents law and order.
Ralph also takes responsibility for others through building huts in chapter 3 and making
rules about keeping the environment clean through using the ‘rocks right along beyond
the bathing pool as a lavatory’ in chapter 5.
Ralph’s opposite is the totalitarian leader Jack, who demands complete obedience from
his followers and whose greatest desire is to torture and kill (seen through his obsession
with hunting).
Let’s take a look at a few key moments for Jack.
The first time we meet Jack he is controlling the choir who arrive ‘marching…in two
parallel lines’ in chapter 2.
The choir are wearing long black cloaks which are immediately deemed impractical in the
‘heat of the tropics’.
Jack is the leader of the choir, as seen when he shouts ‘Choir!
Stand still!’
Golding’s use of sentence length and exclamations indicate his abrupt leadership style: nothing
is open to debate - he demands obedience from all.
As the novel progresses, more and more members of the group join Jack.
The thing about this topic of leadership is that, whilst there are different approaches
to leadership, neither of them is promoted as the ‘right’ way to lead.
promoted by Golding either.
Ralph wants rules and regulations, as he puts it ‘Because the rules are the only thing
we’ve got!’
(ch 5) However, his democratic approach doesn’t work in all situations.
When the boys are talking about being scared of ghosts, Ralph says ‘We’ll have a vote
on them; on ghosts I mean’ (ch 5).
Obviously this doesn’t make any sense at all.
It becomes very clear that Ralph’s democratic approach falls apart when it comes to fear.
In the same chapter, Ralph realises his approach isn’t working: ‘Things are breaking up.
I don’t understand why.
We began well; we were happy.
And then…people started getting frightened.’
(ch 5).
In her book ‘William Golding : Lord of the Flies’, Raychel Haugrud Reiff writes about
this moment:
‘The fear of an unknown beast, then, causes the boys to willingly give up their freedom
and idyllic life to be dominated and threatened by a dictator who promises protection from
the unknown.’
It’s also worth noting that Ralph is filled with the same innate evil as everyone else,
seen through the fact that he takes part in the murder of Simon.
So we can write about leadership but it’s important to realise what Golding is saying:
that there are no perfect ways to lead, because humans will always mess things up.
In a 1962 UCLA lecture, later published under the title ‘Fable’, Golding explored this
idea further:
‘It seems to me that in the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century society of the
West…social systems, political systems were composed, detached from the real nature of
man.
They were what one might call political symphonies…Why, then, have they never worked?
How did the idealist concepts of primitive socialism turn at last into Stalinism?…It
seemed to me that man’s capacity for greed, his innate cruelty and selfishness was being
hidden behind a kind of pair of political pants.
I believed then, that man was sick - -not exceptional man, but average man.’
This explains why Ralph’s system falls apart – in theory it’s good, but it doesn’t
work, because it relies on people being good, and people are not good.
We might pause and ask ourselves where Golding got this pessimistic view from – we’re
fortunate enough to find the answer again in his own words: ‘’Before the Second
World War I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of
society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation
of society…but after the war I did not because I was unable to.’
So in a question about leadership, you can explore the different approaches, but you
might want to show how both of them fall apart – and the overall message of that comes
back to the innate evil inherent in humanity.
One other thing worthy of consideration: why isn’t Piggy every considered for leader?
He is by far the smartest in the group:
‘I expect we’ll want to know their names…We ought to have a meeting.’
‘this is an island.
Nobody don’t know we’re here.’
‘What intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy.’
‘Piggy discounted all this learnedly as a ‘mirage’’ ( that’s a chapter 4 in
reference to the sea floating into the sky at midday)
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘about a clock.
We could make a sundial.’
‘I know about people.
I know about me.
And him.
He can’t hurt you: but if you stand out of the way he’d hurt the next thing.
And that’s me.’
Piggy is intelligent and intuitive, but is never even considered for the leadership role.
As the narrator points out in chapter five, ‘Piggy could think…only Piggy was no chief.’
This makes us wonder, what is a chief, then?
Perhaps you can answer that question yourself in the comments section below.
I hope you found this video useful!