Power In Lord Of The Flies Essay Example

📌Category: Books, Lord of the Flies, William Golding, Writers
📌Words: 413
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 15 September 2021

The novel ‘Lord of the Flies’, written by William Golding tells the story of a group of boys who become stranded on an uninhabited island after their plane crashes during World War Two. Initially, the island seems to good too be true and soon enough the boys are working together to maintain a signal fire in hopes of a rescue. The schoolboys continue to be quite civilised and attempt to do everything ‘just the way the grownups would’, however as the strong and malicious acquire power, the boys’ connection to civilisation quickly deteriorates into the inherit ‘darkness of human nature’. In the beginning, power and authority was gained through admirable qualities and respect, but as the savagery increased, being admired was not string enough for one to obtain that power ultimately. 

In the novel, Ralph initially established power because of his adult like manner, however even though he was admired, he lost his power ultimately. Ralph first gains power when he discovers the conch and calls the first assembly among the boys. He acquires admiration and respect because of his main desire to be rescued and the fact that he asserts authority over them by trying to ‘set some rules’ in order to remain civilised. The boys admired Ralph for superficial reasons like his appearance and age ‘which marked him out’ from others like Jack who was already a leader. Even though Ralph starts out as admired and respected, as the novel progresses, it is understood that the boys begin to take advantage of his kindness and care, as even when he tried to be serious and lay down the rules once again, the assembly was ‘full of noise…, excitement… and laughter, [then] shredded away and became a discursive and random scatter’. 

This portrays that the boys refuse to listen to Ralph because they know he won’t do anything about it, which he doesn’t because he knows that if he tries, he will lose the power and there will no longer be any order or civilisation. Ralph also loses admiration and power because of his insufficiency to follow through with his ideas. Although Ralph put forward his ideas and rules, he only began to action them, and as they moved forward, he does little to execute said rules and ideas. Ralph ‘would treat the day’s decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player’, making it easy for the boys to disregard his power more and more. Although Ralph had power and was respected from the start, because of his lack of strength and aggression, those who were feared were able to take it from him.

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