ralph

• "eyes that proclaimed no devil" "might make a boxer"


  physiognomy implies both his sense of morality and his ability to survive
• "Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing"

  • Ralph is aligned with the conch and leadership, despite the fact he is an accidental leader
  • childish euphemism connotes the boys' naivety at understanding democracy
• "The rules! You're breaking the rules!"


  epistrophe in repeating "rules" emphasises Ralph's myopic desperation to maintain order and civilisation on the island.
• "I'm chief. I'll go. Don't argue."

  • monosyllabic language adopted to appeal to the hunters
  • fragments reflect Ralph's fear and fallibility
• "The desire to squeeze and hurt was overmastering"


  language previously associated with Jack and the hunters adopted to describe Ralph's innate savagery, connoting his fallible leadership
• "The understandable and lawful world was slipping away"


  Metaphor depicts Ralph's rationality as the Freudian 'ego', he is realistic, reasonable and pragmatic and an antithesis to Jack
• "gripped the conch"


  The conch cements Ralph's leadership, representing democracy, and the verb "gripped" connotes his increasing desperation to maintain civility on the island
• "Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy"


  • syndetic listing heightens the sense of depravity that the boys caused on the island
  • emotive verb of "wept" reminds readers of the corruption of youth and naivety
• Golding depicts Ralph's failed leadership to lament how democracy is vulnerable to tyranny, just like how in the 1930s tyrannical Nazi Germany eroded the fair democracy of the Weimar Republic.
• Ralph's facade of strong leadership begins to slip when the boys begin to lose respect for him and his rule of reason and order.
• Golding exposes that all humans have the capacity for violence and barbarism, catalysed by his observations and experiences of WW2. This is mirrored in Ralph's response at the end of the novel who laments he realisation that savagery prevails civilisation.