Lord of the Flies

William Golding’s use of stereotypes helped us readers understand the characters easier. The way William Golding introduced the characters helped me relate them to the types of people I see everyday. Every time a new character was introduced, I would be able to make a connection with them. It felt as if each character could belong to a clique at school. I feel Ralph represented leadership and structure in Lord of the Flies. When Ralph was introduced into the story, I could already view him as one of those stereotypical athletes. He had the characteristics of a leader, which is probably why the kids voted him instead of Jack. He established himself as leader at the time he called the first meeting. He didn’t have to second-guess himself when it came to decide if he should be leader or not. There was something in Ralph that Jack didn’t have. Ralph had the look of a leader, as he was a fair boy. I feel as if the boys chose Ralph over Jack because Ralph seemed to be the one to be followed. His fair appearance gave him the upper hand in the voting. The boys would rather have an athletic, structured boy as leader than some kid in a choir group.
Jack represents violence in this story as he is the leader of the hunters and is the aggressive one out of the group. As he is being introduced he already shows aggression towards Piggy by calling him names. Going farther into Lord of the Flies, Jack becomes more violent and it shows through his actions. After his incident of not being able to kill a pig, he becomes addicted to hunting. As he is slowly becoming more violent, more boys want to follow him instead of Ralph, which only feeds his aggression. When it came to the time when most of the boys join Jack and leave Ralph, Jack becomes the stereotypical violence loving leader and he starts to think that hunting will fix everything. Jack’s influence on the boys allowed him to control them. All the boys started to act in a savage manner after Jack gained power. The savage