"The Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

The Truth Behind the Leader
Machiavelli once wrote in a letter, "My view is that it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved." A prime model of application can be seen in William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies. In the story a group of British schoolboys become marooned on an uninhabited island due to a nuclear war. On the island the attempted democracy by the boys gradually begins to fail into anarchy, disarray and even death, a situation created by Jack. …