Ralph (Lord of the Flies)

Categories: Allegory

Ralph. Ralph is a boy who represents leadership in the book. Ralph's capacity for leadership is evident from the very beginning (he is the only elected leader of the boys). During the crisis caused by the sight of the dead paratrooper on the mountain, Ralph is able to proceed with both sense and caution. He works vigilantly to keep the group's focus on the hope for rescue. When the time comes to investigate the castle rock, Ralph takes the lead alone, despite his fear of the so-called beast.

Even in this tense moment, politeness is his default.

When Simon mumbles that he doesn't believe in the beast, Ralph "answered him politely, as if agreeing about the weather. " British culture is famed for civilized reserve in emotional times. By the standards of the society he's left behind, Ralph is a gentleman. Piggy. Piggy is the most sensible person on the whole island. Piggy is the intellectual with poor eyesight, a weight problem, and asthma.

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He is the most physically vulnerable of all the boys, despite his greater intelligence. Piggy represents the rational world.

By frequently quoting his aunt, he also provides the only female voice. Piggy's intellect benefits the group only through Ralph; he acts as Ralph's advisor. He cannot be the leader himself because he lacks leadership qualities and has no rapport with the other boys. Piggy also relies too heavily on the power of social convention. He believes that holding the conch gives him the right to be heard. He believes that upholding social conventions get results.

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Jack. Jack becomes the leader of choir but he also represents evil and violence, the dark side of human nature.

A former choirmaster and "head boy" at his school, he arrived on the island having experienced some success in exerting control over others by dominating the choir with his militaristic attitude. He is eager to make rules and punish those who break them, although he consistently breaks them himself when he needs to further his own interests. His main interest is hunting, an endeavor that begins with the desire for meat and builds to the overwhelming urge to master and kill other living creatures.

Hunting develops the savagery that already ran close to his surface, making him "ape-like" as he prowls through the jungle. His domain is the emotions, which rule and fuel his animal nature. The conflict on the island begins with Jack attempting to dominate the group rather than working with Ralph to benefit it. He frequently impugns the power of the conch, declaring that the conch rule does not matter on certain parts of the island. Yet he uses the conch to his advantage when possible, such as when he calls his own assembly to impeach Ralph.

For him, the conch represents the rules and boundaries that have kept him from acting on the impulses to dominate others. Their entire lives in the other world, the boys had been moderated by rules set by society against physical aggression. On the island, however, that social conditioning fades rapidly from Jack's character. He quickly loses interest in that world of politeness and boundaries, which is why he feels no compunction to keep the fire going or attend to any of the other responsibilities for the betterment or survival of the group. Simon. Simon is quite different from other boys.

Simon's role as an artistic, religious visionary is established not only by his hidden place of meditation but also by the description of his eyes: "so bright they had deceived Ralph into thinking him delightfully gay and wicked. " While Piggy has the glasses — one symbol of vision and truth — Simon has bright eyes, a symbol of another kind of vision and truth. Littluns follow him, and he picks choice fruit for them from spots they can't reach, a saintly or Christ-like image. He stands up for Piggy and helps him get his glasses back when Jack knocks them off his head, another allusion to Simon's visionary bent.

In addition, he has a secret place in the jungle, where he spends time alone. Simon's loner tendencies make the other boys think he's odd, but, for the reader, Simon's credibility as a mystic is established when he prophesies to Ralph "You'll get back to where you came from. " Simon reaches an abstract understanding of mankind's latent evil nature and unthinking urge to dominate as "mankind's essential illness. " When Simon tries to visualize what the beast might look like, "there arose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick" — Golding's vision of humanity as flawed by inherent depravity.

Golding gives this knowledge to an outsider like Simon to reflect the place visionaries or mystics typically hold in society: on the fringes, little understood by the majority, and often feared or disregarded. Like other mystics, Simon asks questions the other boys cannot answer. His questions to them, "What's the dirtiest thing there is? " and "What else is there to do? " require both abstract thought and courageous action to answer. Samneric. They are twins (Sam and Eric) and they represent totally civilized and socialized persons. As identical twins, they have always been a group, albeit the smallest of groups, but a group nevertheless.

They know no other way than to submit to the collective identity and will. They are initially devoted to rescue but easily overwhelmed by the ferocity of tribe. They represent the well-intentioned members of general public who play by the rules of whoever is in charge. They are easily intimidated by Jack and abandon their fire-tending duties at his command. Seeing Ralph's rage at the resultant loss of a rescue opportunity, Samneric mock him once they are alone, despite the fact that their desertion of duty caused his anger and the loss of possible rescue.

On a realistic, perhaps human, level, they may laugh to dispel their guilt or because their childish perspective has already allowed them to forget the loss they caused or because their priority is merely to avoid punishment. On the symbolic level, however, laughter is a totally social act. After the horror of Simon's death, in which they participate, they fear for their own lives because they have remained loyal to Ralph. As Ralph's group plans to approach Jack's tribe, Samneric want to paint themselves like tribe members, hoping for mercy through assimilation.

When the twins are captured by the tribe, Samneric "protested out of the heart of civilization" but abandon their loyalty to that civilization to avoid punishment, betraying Ralph out of concern for their own welfare. Their return to civilization will be fairly easy because they look only to appease whoever is in charge. Roger. Roger enjoy hurting people, he seems to be a sadist. His evil motives are different from Jack's, who pursues leadership and stature and enjoys the thrill of the hunt. Roger just likes to hurt people.

He is described in Chapter 1 as a boy "who kept to himself with avoidance and secrecy. " His secret is that he is, in some ways, more evil than even Jack. All his life, Roger has been conditioned to leash or mask his impulses. The "irresponsible authority" of Jack's reign offers him the chance to unleash his innate cruelty. Initially, in a mean-spirited prank, Roger throws rocks at the unsuspecting littlun, Henry, but he throws them so that they miss, surrounded as Henry is by "the protection of parents and school and policeman and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned by . . . civilization. Once he joins Jack's tribe, he has lost that conditioning and eventually kills Piggy with one boulder, which was not intended to miss. Roger carves out a distinct niche in the tribe as the hangman, the torturer who plays a key role in all dictatorships, and relishes the role of a killer. From his point of view on top of Castle Rock, "Ralph was a shock of hair and Piggy a bag of fat" — not other human beings. Mentally dehumanizing those not in his group frees Roger from the restraints of decency, an effect he feels as "a sense of delirious abandonment" when he releases the rock to kill Piggy.

Updated: Nov 01, 2022
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Ralph (Lord of the Flies). (2020, Jun 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/ralph-lord-of-the-flies-new-essay

Ralph (Lord of the Flies) essay
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