As we touched on in class this morning, and as several of my review comments suggest, I'm not sure that Ralph does "have leadership", as most people seem to think he does. If I see something like (and I'm making this example up) "Ralph is a strong leader because he has good leadership", I'm not sure that the writer has even said anything.
What do you think?
- Does Ralph have leadership?
- Is he a leader?
- Are these questions the same or different?
Having just done a quick Google, I disagree with most of the online rubbish on this: it seems to me superficial and lacking solid support. Perhaps you can do better, either to support or to correct, what seems to be the majority view online.
Golding, W. & Epstein, E. (1954).
Lord of the Flies. New York: Perigee
For me, it’s the most important for you to be able to distinguish between having leadership and being a leader. As the contexts themselves, they are different. If you have leadership it means that you have ability to encourage other people in you group to accomplish the goal that is set, can persuade others to follow your direction and have specific skills that are outstanding for the rest of the group. Most of the leaders do have this skill, but at the same time it doesn’t require for leaders to have leadership. In other words, leaders don’t have to have leadership. The answer to the 3rd question is these 2 questions are different.
ReplyDeleteBased on reading story from Lord of the flies I think Ralph is a leader but doesn’t have leadership. In my point of view people who have leadership have to have this quality throughout their life time and all the time. The support is when he got selected by election from other boys to be the chief of the group so since that time he had literally been a leader. He did his job pretty well on setting rules and separating duties at the beginning of the story. But in the following chapters after that, he couldn’t control the boy to stay in the assembly, persuade them to listen to him for the rest of his talk, control the boys to do their duties and stop them from having arguments, for example, Jack punched Piggy in his stomach without saying sorry. As the time go by, even though he was a leader he got more cruel days and days. For example, in the play, he intentionally hurted Robert while he was acting as hunter and Robert was acting as a pig. Another example is that as he thought he was a good man he with the rest of the boys killed Simon. These are why I think Ralph is a leader but doesn’t have leadership.
I agree with wow that a leader is not always necessary to possess leadership. In the situation that a certain group has to choose someone to be a leader, one who seems attractive or charismatic may receive more votes than one who has leadership. So far, this should be the answer of the third question that the first two questions are different. For me, leadership is personal ability to lead the group to succeed and accomplish a expected goal. Thus, as we can see thoughout the story, Ralph does not seem to be able to unite and lead the group successfully, group are divided. Jack does not always obey the rule as Ralph expect. Ralph cannot deal with any fighting between the members, especially between Jack and Piggy. However, he shows some characteristics which a leader should have, such as contribution to the group, justice, and making sensible decisions. Such qualities, compared with other people in the group, would make him most likely to be the leader of the group. Anyways, Ralph has no leadership as he cannot lead the group to live peacefully in the island or perform the proposed plan involving the signal of fire as well as expected.
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