Kevin Park
Proctor
10 Lit and Comp
1 November 2018
Theme Development in Lord of the Flies
In the story Lord of the Flies, Ralph is the leader of a group of British boys stranded on
an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean after a plane crash. Ralph and the kids have to work
together in order to survive until they are rescued. While they are stranded on the island, they go
through a series of changes that evidently throws the boys into chaos and evil. Through the
development of Ralph’s character, a theme is also developed through it. In Lord of the Flies,
Golding develops the theme of order and civilization through the character of Ralph and his
association with the symbol of the conch. Ralph is a leader that represents civilization and order
while Jack is the other character that is able to compete with his leadership and represents
savagery.
Ralph is a confident and handsome, blonde-haired, 12 year old boy that is decided as the
leader of the kids. Ralph earns the respect of all the kids and is able to influence the boys. When
it came to vote for chief, it was an almost unanimous decision to elect Ralph as chief. At first,
Ralph was a naive boy who was very hopeful for their situation. He was very optimistic about
everything that was to happen and when the kids started to feel overwhelmed as they learned that
nobody knew where they were, he cheered them up. He told them, “This is our island. It's a good
island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun” (Golding 35). This shows a
compassionate character trait to Ralph and puts him in good light. As the leader, he decides to
make a basic set of rules and jobs that he tells everyone to follow. Ralph thought that everyone
would follow his orders easily and he figured out very quickly that this was not true. Jack started
to directly disobey his rules. This obedience started to slowly infect the rest of the boys and they
also started to become lazy with their jobs. Ralph started to express his discontent as he said,
“They’re hopeless. The older ones aren't much better. D’you see? All day I’ve been working
with Simon. No one else. They’re off bathing, or eating, or playing” (Golding 50). The longer he
stays, the more Ralph realizes that it is very difficult to lead a group of kids. Not only that, the
situation becomes worse. Ralph starts to experience horrific things from Jack’s group once he
takes over. He witnessed the murder of Simon and Piggy. They were his close friends and by the
evil of Jack and his group, they were forever gone. In the final sentences of the novel, Ralph,
“wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the
true, wise friend called Piggy” (Golding 202). He realized that the evil authority of Jack truly
influenced his group and drove them to do these horrific acts. A situation similar to Jack and his
boys was shown in the Milgram experiment on obedience in 1963. The results shocked the whole
world and the resu...
