Betrayal By Leadership (revised)

What qualities make a good leader? People have different leadership styles and some people respond well to only specific leadership styles. Human beings look to work alongside and under leaders in whom they have faith. Leaders are comfortable with who will make them feel safe. However, what do people look for when their leader is losing their leadership power? Typically with humans, if somebody is afraid of their own actions they make up or choose something else to be a scapegoat. To them they believe that their scapegoat justifies the action. The Lord of the Flies demonstrates that in society, people will often not take responsibility for their destructive actions and blame it on something else.

In the novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of British school boys are stranded on an island. The boys, who have never been alone in the wild before decide to come together in order to survive and work together to find a way for them to be rescued. After several days on the island the leader of the hunters breaks off and slowly it goes from the rest of the hunters going to him to most of the boys joining him. By chapter eleven the original leader, Ralph is on his own. By exposing readers to Ralph’s betrayal, William Golding emphasizes how contexts, particularly those that are isolating, influence how people treat one another. Despite Ralph’s strong relationship to the other boys in the beginning of the narrative, he is betrayed because his leadership approach is ineffective. This is a challenge that people come across in their lives and sometimes some people’s betrayal is larger than others. Ralph gradually loses his grip on his fellow boys after a while, forcing him to lose his power in leadership. The team members begin to dislodge themselves from the team before Ralph even knows it. Jack does not agree with Ralph’s plans for the fire - to just leave the beast alone. Jack feels insulted by Ralph and believes that Ralph is not a fit leader - Jack doesn’t want to play their games - he runs off and builds his own fire. Soon Ralph notices that there are few bigger kids in his tribe. The remaining big kids and hunters notice this as well and recognize it as a sign of Ralph’s growing weakness in leadership so they abandon him.

A classic example of a true leadership and betrayal is the story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. This took place in 1879 in the South Pacific. Captain Bligh and his men on the ship were looking for breadfruit which they gathered in Tahiti. The men loved the easy life in Tahiti. When they left, the men became angry and decided to take control of the ship. In late April one of the men, named Christian, decided to take action in the early hours of the morning. He and a couple other men bound the captain into a small ship along with approximately 20 other men. Fryer was somebody who sided with the captain. He was supposed to be second in command, the first mate. After Christian takes control of the ship Fryer meets with him. Christian says to Fryer, “I have been in hell for weeks past. Captain Bligh has brought this on himself.” So Christian is saying that Captain Bligh is the guilty one, for bringing treason upon himself.

Christian and Jack show similarities with each other with their feelings about their leaders. Christian thought that Bligh was not a capable captain, and Jack felt like Ralph was not “… a proper chief.” In a meeting, Jack says to the boys “He’s not a hunter . He’d never have got us meat. He isn’t a prefect and we don’t know anything about him. He just gives us orders and expects people to obey for nothing.” (pg 126). Like Christian, Jack was upset at his leader for giving him commands that he did not agree with and interrupted his peaceful way of life from the day he was placed under his authority. Both Christian and Jack wanted a simple life where they were not treated unfairly and bossed around to do jobs they did not feel passionate about. They also felt like they could be better leaders because they could do the things that their leaders lacked. That was to bring peace of mind and enjoyment to their team members. They were partially correct about this because they were workers and experienced their brothers’ pain and desires first hand so they knew what they had to do to fix this.

Another example of a mutiny is the betrayal on the HMS Hermione, a British warship, in 1797. The ship’s captain, Hugh Pigot was having the crew tie up the sails before a storm. In his opinion the crew was not doing a fast enough job. In return he announced that whoever got down last from the mast(s) would be flogged. Three men fell down to their deaths. As a result, Captain Pigot had a dozen crew members flogged. That night, the majority of the crew got together saying they had enough unjust treatment from their master. So the party sneaked up to the Captain’s quarters where they stabbed and threw him overboard alive. Later, they took out several of the ship’s officers in a similar manner. The crew then sailed to a Spanish port where they thought that they would find safety from the British Navy.

Like in Lord of the Flies where Jack leads a group of boys to start their own tribe the crew of the Hermione got together and thought that they could live out a more peaceful life away from the tyranny of their captain and the British authorities. Jack’s tribe wanted to start life anew and the crew of the Hermione wanted to restart their lives in a more peaceful way. Both sought ease and relaxation when their authorities wanted them to do work that was immoral to them.

In conclusion it is human nature that the members of a team will turn against their leader when their leader is not giving enough of what the team desires. When reading the Lord of the Flies the reader can learn this by closely observing the relationship between Jack and Ralph and ultimately their conflict. Their relationship together ended in Jack scapegoating Ralph for the tribes hardships and pain, which then convinces the other tribe members to turn against Ralph so that they won’t have to go on suffering with Ralph’s difficult leadership. We see the same thing with the mutiny back in the previous paragraphs. The crew members put blame on their leaders for their hardships and use that as a reason to turn against their leaders so that they can change things for the better and to their liking. The cost of betrayal for the people involved outweighs the suffering caused by a bad leader. Sometimes it is only through betrayal that humans can achieve the best outcome.

Works Cited Golding, William. Lord of The Flies. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Guttridge, et al. “MUTINY A History of Naval Insurrection.” Biblio - Uncommonly Good Books Found Here., 1 Jan. 1992, biblio.co.uk/9780870212819.

Boyle, Alan. “10 Extremely Dramatic Mutinies From History.” Listverse, 21 June 2014, listverse.com/2014/03/31/10-extremely-dramatic-mutinies-from-history/.