Lord Of The Flies Ralph Leadership Analysis

Golding lived in a time where there was a lot of conflict between different types of leadership and many lived in fear that another world war would break out. We can deduce from his novel what his views were on the different leadership styles and how people are affected by them.
Ralph was, at the beginning of the novel, the most respectable character and was democratically voted chief. He is portrayed at first as a good and fair leader that clings to the idea of adult civilisation. This appears to work effectively, however there are soon cracks in the group – Ralph will order them to do something but after a while they will all drift away and forget about his orders. Although democracy was, in Golding’s view, the best way to lead, Ralph seems to be a weak leader and as tensions build among the group he seems to crumble under the pressure, showing us that being a fair leader isn’t always synonymous with being a good one. However, it could be argued that Ralph isn’t weak as Jack’s forceful leadership was inevitable as the boys would follow
Jack uses persuasive talk of meat to lure the boys into favouring him over Ralph. This could be conveying that dictators are very good at manipulating people, therefore Golding could be warning readers not to give into them as bad things will follow. Despite Jack’s harsh rule during which he uses the boys like slaves and uses fear to get them to follow his orders, the boys do appear to be having fun in the tribe. Although, their savage activities end up leading to the deaths of Simon and Piggy which could mean that Golding believes we need to refrain from letting our inner evil take over as society will fail as did Jack’s tribe. Golding’s authorial intent could be to show us that dictatorships and harsh ruling always fails, but similarly so do weak democratical societies that appease the