Jack Merridew's Character In Lord Of The Flies

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding contains a character whose dynamic is astonishingly similar to ones of a dictator. A character whose motives are selfish, whose actions are ruthless, and a character who needs to acquire total power. These personality traits were built around a character that Golding named Jack Merridew. Jack’s character almost instantly can be observed as both a problem and a threat to the rest of the boys on the island. Comparable to the character of Jack Merridew is the dictator, Fidel Castro. In comparison, Fidel Castro is a Marxist Cuban leader who overthrew Batista, established military and political relations with the Soviet Union, which lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, under his administration, transformed

Fidel Castro began organizing an expedition against Batista called the 26th of July Movement. (Lockwood) Accordinging to the Encyclopedia of World Biography, On December 2, 1956, Castro, his brother Raúl Castro, and 80 other men landed in Oriente Province. After encounters with the army, in which all but 12 of his men were killed or captured, Castro fled to the Sierra Maestra, forming in these mountains a nucleus for a guerrilla operation. This compares to Jack because he experiences a similar initial defeat when “every hand outside the choir except Piggy’s was raised immediately “ (23) for Ralph to be chief and not Jack. However, Jack later gains most of the boys to be in his tribe and they become the dominant group while Ralph, Piggy, Sam, and Eric became the outsiders. Castro, after the first attempt, by 1958, developed a movement of national revulsion against Batista. The Encyclopedia of World Biography explains that “Castro emerged as the undisputed leader of the anti-Batista opposition, and his guerrillas increased their control over rural areas.” His success in gaining power the second time by overthrowing a leader is comparable to Jack’s rise to power by overthrowing Ralph as chief; creating a stronger tribe of