English Essay

Describe at least one important character in the written text. Explain how this character is revealed to you throughout the text

Plan

• Use the sentences Mr Johnson told us about
• Doing it on Ralph
• Possible points could be…
• Important things/traits (such as being a dictator, (Jack)) about the character and how those things are revealed throughout the text

Ralph is a really important character in the novel, ‘Lord of the Flies’ and he is revealed to the readers throughout the text. The novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ was written by ‘William Golding’. William Golding used the characters in his book to show how human’s change over the course of time if they are put in a different environment. The author showed this by making his book about how there are boys on an island and how they slowly but surely become savages. Ralph is revealed to the audience as being a strong leader, having good common sense and being a properly socialized and civilized young man until he has been on the island for a long time.

Ralph is revealed to the audience throughout the book as being a strong leader. A strong leader is somebody who directs or guides a group of people. Good leadership is when you can set priorities and complete what has to be done with the feelings of the group in mind. In the book, Ralph demonstrates many traits of having good leadership. Ralph shows good leadership near the beginning of the book when he blows the conch. This shows that he has good leadership because he is uniting the group together, therefore making them more likely to survive on the island. He is also a good leader because he doesn’t get caught up with theory, like Piggy does. William Golding shows this in two ways, showing him demonstrate these qualities in action and through showing how others like Piggy react to him. Ralph says “We did everything adults would do, what went wrong?” This shows that he tried his best to do what adults would do, because he knows that adults would react to the situation better than kids would, which shows that he is doing his best to help out the rest of the group, which makes him a great leader. Overall Ralph is revealed to be a great leader in a variety of ways, by William Golding.

Ralph is portrayed by William Golding as having a lot of common sense. He did this because he wanted to show that the other kids were letting their natural instincts take over them and that all they wanted to do was have fun and get food, while Ralph actually had common sense and wanted to make a fire that would get them off the island and to safety. Ralph showed that he had common sense when he tried to build huts that would keep them safe. Ralph stands in contrast to Jack, who only cares about hunting and gaining power within the group of boys. When Ralph creates a meeting place for the boys, he is showing that he has good common sense, because when he does this he is keeping order within the boys, which is delaying them from turning into savages. Ralph says “Which is better – to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill.” William Golding made him say this, to show that Ralph has a lot of common sense. Overall Ralph is portrayed by the author to be a very smart boy in a lot of ways.

At the beginning of the book, the author (William Golding) portrayed Ralph as being the primary representative of order, civilization and productive leadership. Although as the boys on the island begin to succumb to their savage instincts after being on the island for so long, Ralph’s authority among the boys starts to decline, and at the same time, Jack’s authority is rising. Near the end of the novel, almost all of the boys except for Piggy, join Jack’s group. At one point in the novel, Ralph says “We’ve got to have rules and obey them, after all, we are not savages”. Overall Ralph is revealed to be a primary representative of order, civilization and productive leadership.

To conclude, Ralph is an extremely important character in ‘Lord of the Flies’ and William Golding reveals him to the readers throughout the text. He reveals Ralph to be a strong leader, to have great common sense and to be a properly civilized and socialized boy.