Ralph's Speech In Lord Of The Flies

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is the story of an isolated group of young English schoolboys who were left stranded on a remote island with no adult supervision after a plane crash. They were forced to form their own government of sorts, with a boy named Ralph as their elected leader and with a set of rules for them all to abide by. During chapter 5 of Lord of the Flies, this precarious system began to collapse during a meeting meant to create and reaffirm rules lead by Ralph. As his island mates began to object these new and reinforced rules, Ralph tried to persuade the boys in his favor. He fails to keep the majority of the boys under his thumb, as they didn’t like all the control and changes to be made. Ralph’s argument was fairly weak, and it could’ve been stronger with better use of the persuasive devices ethos, pagos and logos throughout his speech. At this point in the story, Ralph has captured the attention of the fellow islanders after discussing where they must relieve themselves. None of the boys really argued with him over this, as none of them wanted their food or other necessities to be contaminated with feces. Ralph chose to take advantage of this moment by circling back to the issue of fire, saying “The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going?” (Golding, 80) With this, Ralph is attempting to use logic, or logos to show the boys it was only logical to keep the fire going.