Challenges in William Golding's Lord of the Flies Essay Example

A plane crashed and left a group of young boys stranded on a deserted island with no adults. Ralph, the island leader, has to step up and take charge of these boys to survive and live with no one to guide them. Ralph learns new things every day, whether it’s good or bad. Lack of society has influenced Ralph by always having to redirect his ideas and plans, having to take charge, and having lots of responsibilities. 

One way that Ralph has been influenced by a lack of society is that he is finding out that sometimes his plans don’t always work out and that he has to quickly figure out other options. For example, in chapter four, “Ralph blundered on, savaging himself, as the wisp of smoke moved on. The fire was dead” (67). This event takes place when Ralph told the hunters to try to hunt for meat, but also to keep the fire alive. The quote tells us that the hunters did not do their job at keeping the fire going. They all went hunting instead of having half of them hunt and the rest to keep the fire while Ralph and a few others worked on building the shelters. Ralph gets very upset at this because this could have shown the ship that was going by that there were people deserted on an island and could use help. Ralph has to learn from this and pick more responsible people to watch the fire in the future. Ralph learns that certain people aren’t as attentive to the fire as he would like. Another example, “Listen, everybody. I’ve got to have time to think things out. I can’t decide what to do straight off…” (23). Ralph gets voted and he says directly that he doesn’t know what to do, but he will figure a way to survive and live. Ralph has lots of times where he has to learn and resolve problems when they come from a lack of society. “He spoke aloud. ‘Think.’ What was the sensible thing to do?” (196). Ralph is being followed by Jack’s group, and he doesn’t know what to do. He goes through ideas that could work but he doesn’t think any of them will work. He is scared that they will find him and kill him. Piggy has been dead so Ralph doesn’t have anyone to help him in these types of situations because Piggy was always the brain of the friendship. He uses his resources around him to find a way to get out of the situation by running away and back towards where his shelter was. He finds the officer there and they all get rescued. 

Ralph learns that he has to take charge of this situation that they’re in from a lack of society. Everyone votes for Ralph to become chief and guide the way for them. Ralph quickly realizes that these boys freak out 24/7 when something might not go as expected. Ralph is always calling meetings to put them under order so things could go smoothly. For instance, on page 23, “Everybody must stay round here and wait and not go away. Three of us- if we take more we’d get all mixed, and lose each other- three of us will go on an expedition.” Ralph is taking charge by bringing two other guys with them to scope out the area while the others stay back. He doesn’t want to be in charge of  all these people who could go because he has to think about what is best for the people, so having tons of guys asking him questions wouldn’t be good.  

Having a plane crash with no adults is very scary and what’s even scarier is when you have to step up and be responsible for all of these boys. Ralph has tons of responsibilities such as making sure no one gets injured, everyone has the necessities, and everything gets done. To show what I mean is, “I was talking about the smoke. Don’t you want to be rescued? All you talk about is pig, pig, pig” (54). Ralph wants the fire to be alive so smoke can rise up and if there are any ships or people nearby, then they can see the smoke and help the boys. The hunters just want to hunt and kill pigs for meat, but they learn at the end of the book that the fire saved them and not hunting pigs. Ralph is mad at the hunters for when they just walk around and barely hunt anything while he stays back to work on the shelters for everyone to sleep in. Ralph has given up so much time and energy for these boys just to get ganged up on and almost killed if it wasn’t for the ironic fire.  It’s ironic because Ralph always talked about the fire and how important it was, but Jack hated it until he broke off from Ralph and made his army. He swarmed Ralph’s shelter at night and stole their fire, which saved them because an officer saw it and saved them. Ralph is just trying to get everything done without fighting, but sometimes you have to firmly tell people what’s going to help everyone out in the long run. 

This book shows how certain people will rise to the challenge of helping others and others will do their own thing that might not help everyone. Ralph steps up and takes all sorts of challenges given to him throughout the book and uses his resources wisely by asking questions and calling meetings.