Ralph And Roosevelt's Leadership In Lord Of The Flies

Being a leader is not a simple task to manage. Some are born to be leaders and for others it’s a struggle to guide their people. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses Ralph to represent Franklin D. Roosevelt through their many similarities and differences in their leadership qualities: guiding their people, providing shelter, protecting them and wanting to stay neutral. Their leadership qualities made both of them neither a great leader nor a bad one. The struggles of both Ralph and Roosevelt shows how everyone, including great leaders, has faults. During Roosevelt’s presidency, he did not save the Jews to the best of his ability. Roosevelt’s presidency lasted from March 4, 1933 to April 12, 1945, during World War II. Hitler

Roosevelt had “failed to rescue the Jews from the Holocaust” by his lousy effort to save the Jews (Wyman). He knew they needed help, but he ignored their cries for help. He chose to direct his attention towards his campaign and other war intentions. Roosevelt filled only about “20% of the American quota” for the immigrants from Germany (Auerbach). He failed to fill the quota by a major amount, which left around “60,000 German Jews” stuck under Hitler’s cruel leadership. This meant that thousands of Jews were stuck in Germany just waiting to be captured. Roosevelt also “could have set up temporary shelters” for many of the Jews (Wyman). Setting up these shelters and camps in the United States or any United States territory would have saved a numerous amount of lives. Instead, he chose to set up only one camp which had a capacity of 982 refugees. The lack of effort shown by Roosevelt cost him Jewish lives and his reputation of being a great leader. Similar to Roosevelt, Ralph was not successful on providing shelter and keeping the boys on task. Throughout the book, Ralph is constantly bickering to the others that the shelters need to be built. It is proven all through Lord of the Flies that “Ralph is powerless to force the boys to build”