Lord of the Flies on Leadership (Post 1 & 2)

Being a leader is a funny thing. Most people expect leadership to amount to happiness, being liked, and an overwhelming amount of appreciation. Leadership is not all that it is cracked up to be.

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." -Max Depree

Depree describes how different stages of leadership can be very opposite of each other. To me, the "in between" is when things fall apart. Each leader has a way that they want things to go. He has already defined this, and spoken to his followers about it. The success of the overall running of the proposed plan lies on the followers. After all, one person with out support, cannot over rule two people with the rest of the world backing them.

Leaders and followers are constantly competing for each others roles. They want "power". Power as described in the dictionary means the ability to do or act and the control over other people. People strive for this. The European Journal of Social Psychology describes this yearning as "strivings to increase one's sense of agency (personal power) by decreasing dependence on others, rather than by strivings to increase power over others (social power)". On page 102 of Lord of the Flies, Jack and Ralph are competing for their position in a hunt to find the beast. Jack tells Ralph "This is a hunters job." Ralph replies by saying "This is more than a hunters job, because you can't track the beast. And don't you want to be rescued?" Ralph reiterates his point many times by saying the simple line "Don't you want to be rescued?" The competition between Ralph and Jack brought strain on the island. People did not know how they were supposed to feel. Deep down inside, they wanted the power that Ralph and Jack were competing for.

On page 117 in Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Jack are faced with the dilemma to give some of their earned power to someone else named Piggy. Ralph made the decision that it was best for the group to return to the main camp and shelters rather than continue searching for the beast. If they were to have continued searching,  Piggy would have been left to watch the small children called littleluns. Piggy would have taken a small amount of control. The earned leadership was hard for Ralph and Jack to give up.

Jack spends the majority of the book fighting for power with Ralph. Jack wants to be chief: he wants the control that Ralph has. On Page 127 in Lord of the Flies, Jack says "I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you. I'm not going to be apart of Ralph's lot- I'm going off by myself. [...] Anyone who wants to hunt when I do can come too." Jack had reached a breaking point for himself. He had mixed views with Ralph on the ways that they should survive. I believe that Jack had finally thought he would be better off on his own where he could control his own impulses and rely on himself completely. This follows completely what the European Journal of Social Psychology states that the yearning for power is. He wanted to have things his way. But he wanted people to follow him and take part in what he believed. Jack was tired of relying on Ralph for guidance and trust.

The Lord of the Flies displays the competition between two similar people. We can not accept to come second as a human; we yearn to be first. It is not possible to not be dependent on other people yet we cannot accept that fact. When a person can not accept being second, power falls apart.

The Lord of the Flies models my assumption that power must fall apart completely. The children try to create a society similar to their previous one: the one that they believe is perfect. The children create rules and traditions similar to those of the normal world. Together, the children began to run a successful government. Jack's inablitiy to not have complete power destroys this government. The children are put in split decisions that none of them are capable of handling. Until they are rescued, they are in a form of war.

A blogger on the Huffington Post suggests that "A service is inaugurated today and four weeks later it already begins to lose quality and is restricted" This is what happened in the case of the children on the island; everything became normal for awhile and then it was not important. At first, the kids strived for normalcy but once it was there, they did not care about it.

As individuals, we strive for power, and for independence. In order for everyone to be happy with a society, it must fall apart. There is no place that everyone is truthfully happy. Author William Golding shows this through the main characters in the book Lord of the Flies; Ralph and Jack.