Leadership In Lord Of The Flies Essay

Good leadership can be found in an individual that is persevering, does not give up, and encourages others to reach their goals. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, Ralph and Jack are both given the chance to become leaders. However, both of them display negative qualities that reflect onto the rest of the group. Respect, a given human right, leads to a group disagreeing and falling apart when not upheld. When leaders fail to uphold democratic rights, society falters. To begin, when leaders fail to uphold civility, society crumbles. Ralph, the elected leader, fails to uphold respect, a basic right in a democracy. When Piggy and Ralph meet, they exchange names, however Piggy is quite reluctant to do so at first. Eventually he tells Ralph his nickname given to him by his classmates, and at once Ralph begins to laugh at him and he repeats the name over and over. Piggy politely asks Ralph not to tell anyone, to which
He completely disregards respect and yells at Ralph: “And you shut up! Who are you anyway?” He is not upholding civility by being rude and insulting the elected chief in front of the rest of the group: “You can’t hunt, you can’t sing –” Ralph tries to be a good leader, he prioritizes a signal fire over meat, something that Jack immensely disagrees with. However Ralph’s main focus is to try and keep everyone in the group alive, which Jack does not recognize. Instead of recognizing Ralph’s efforts and being appreciative, Jack is discourteous and is not upholding any respect in the group. Society begins to break down because of Jack’s failure to uphold respect. Jack is a model for the hunters and for some of the younger kids. Seeing him being disrespectful to Ralph gives the others the impression that they can do so as well. As some point, everyone begins to ignore and mistreat Ralph. Everything has gotten to the point where the groups disobeys Ralph, and Ralph even thinks that no one will respond to the