Ralph From Lord Of The Flies Character Analysis

In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of young boys is trapped on a deserted island when their plane crashes. The protagonist, Ralph, learns many lessons during his time on the island. Firstly, Ralph learns that it is very hard to be a leader when another boy named Jack tries to kick Ralph out of his position as leader of the boys. Additionally, Ralph learns that it is easy to fall victim to peer pressure and incivility when he participates in Simon’s death. Finally, Ralph realizes that he is completely uncivilized when he is running for his life at the end of the novel. Throughout his time on the island, Ralph learns many hard lessons, but his final lesson of realizing he is completely uncivilized proves to be the most …show more content…
One night, Ralph and Piggy go to the other side of the island to see how Jack’s tribe is doing. While over there, the boys are given meat to eat from the pig that Jack’s tribe had killed. After they ate, Jack’s tribe began to dance around wildly and chant, pretending that Roger was a pig that they were trying to kill. Ralph and Piggy become wrapped up in this dance, chanting along with the other boys. However, this dance soon turns deadly when Simon stumbles in, and the boys, thinking he is the beast, begin to beat him to death. The next morning, when Ralph and Piggy think back to their actions the night before, they realize how easy it was to become caught up in the fanfare of the dance, leading to him acting uncivilly. This lesson affects Ralph deeply, as he knows that Simon was killed as a result of this dance. Additionally, Ralph is upset, as he prided himself on being civil, but he acted extremely uncivilly. Finally, this lesson affects Ralph because he will know for the rest of his life that he participated in someone’s death, even though he was not the one who indeed killed Simon. Ralph will have to live with this knowledge for the rest of his life, while also knowing that if he ever finds himself in a similar situation, he may act the same way. Therefore, Ralph learns another …show more content…
While he did temporarily lose some of his civility during the killing of Simon, Ralph prides himself with being a civil person. However, at the end of the novel, while running from the boys, Ralph loses all of his civility. While Ralph is running from the boys who are trying to kill him, he has to think and act like a wild pig to try to escape the boys. Ralph has to think of places where a pig might hide to escape the boys. During this time, he is unable to realize that he is no longer a civilized person. However, when Ralph is lying on the beach and looks up to see a naval officer standing over him, he is able to regain enough of his civility to realize what he lost. Realizing he lost his civility affects Ralph so deeply because he prides himself with being a civil person. Even when the other boys were no longer civil, Ralph remained, for the most part, civil and level headed. Additionally, Ralph realized that if he could lose his civility, anyone could. Therefore, this lesson is the most significant lesson Ralph learned in this