Essay, Research Paper: Lord Of The Flies

Lord of The Flies Essay
I chose to do essay question on the character Ralph
In the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding the character Ralph, shows some very dramatic character changes. The changes in which Ralph undergoes, include personal as well as social changes.
In the beginning of the novel Ralph is motivated and almost convinced that he and the other boys are going to be rescued from the deserted island they now inhabit. Ralph being a natural leader, was elected chief and immediately able to take control of the boys "the choir belongs to you of coarse"(23) . In the beginning when Ralph was chief, he started to think of a plan on how to get rescued. The first thing Ralph does once he has control, is introduce the conch. The conch is a beautiful pink shell that can be blown like a trumpet. To Ralph the conch is more than just a shell, it is a symbol that shows leadership and power that in turn means democracy. Having things running democratically, he is able to conduct meetings with class and order, without yelling and screaming.
Ralph being the caring and compassionate person that he is, starts to work on getting the boys rescued. He brought up the idea of starting a fire on top of the mountain, so that if a boat or plane passes by they will see the smoke and maybe have a chance of getting rescued. Ralph explained to the boys where the fire was going to be and why so that once the boys reached the top of the mountain. They could gather enough sticks to build a fire. Ralph asked if anyone had matches and than realized that no one would. What Ralph did notice was Piggy's glasses. Ralph sent Jack over to get Piggy's glasses so they could use them as a fire starting tool. Ralph started to move the glasses back and forth and watched in amazement as a thin trickle of smoke started to rise. And within seconds there were flames. Now that they had a fire going they needed to keep it going. The best way Ralph thought they could do this was to have all the boys take turns watching the fire "we've got to have special people for looking after the fire. Any day there may be a ship out there"(42) . This is when Ralph started to lose control.

Now that Ralph had everything running perfectly, things started to deteriorate quickly. Ralph had one more major thing on his agenda, that was to build shelters for the boys. When he brought this up at the next meeting, a problem arose. Although Ralph was the chief, Jack thought that it would be better to go and hunt pigs. Once Jack voiced his opinion, the boys started to believe more in Jack's theory of hunting so that they could eat meat instead of eating rotten unripened fruit. When Jack was on watch for the first time he decided to go hunting instead of doing his job and watching the fire. Since he left the fire unattended, of course it went out. Letting the fire go out made Ralph go crazy, since a ship was spotted. Jack and the other hunters came back, to Ralph who was very angry. Jack didn't care that Ralph was so mad, since they had killed their first pig. Jack also didn't care since he strongly believed that they were not going to be rescued anyway. Ralph is now very upset with Jack, since he let the fire go out. Ralph starts to realize that his perfect democratic group may have a terrorist (beast) within them. Realizing that he needs to correct this problem, he tries even harder in trying to get rescued and keep the boys happy.
Although Ralph had bad times like when the fire went out or when Jack argued with Ralph about building shelters, he also a significant number of important things happen. Like for instance the way he is able to control and organize the boys in such a democratic manner, the way he got the boys together to start a fire or the way he got some boys to go and explore the place where they had landed.