Roger, gloomy and sadistic, represents the innate savagery in the boys in William Golding's allegory, "Lord of the Flies." In Chapter Four he is described as having a forbidding unsociable remoteness. When Henry, a small boy, tires of his play and goes to the water's edge, he is fascinated by the tiny creatures that live in the shallow water. As he becomes absorbed in his play, Roger "waited,too." He hides at first behind a great palm, watching Henry. With atavistic behavior, Roger stoops and picks up a stone, "that token of preposterous time," and bounces it to the right of Henry. He misses Henry again and again because
invisible, yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.
When Jack appears at a nearby tree, Roger sees him and "a darker shadow crept beneath the swarthiness of his skin...." Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Roger represents the intrinsic evil in man. While he is still conditioned by society at this point, Roger does not commit the evil acts that he wishes to do. However, when he has the opportunity later in the novel, Roger, "with a sense of delirious abandonment," hurls against the rocks the boy most representative of rules and order, Piggy. It is also Roger who beats Sam and Eric until they agree to be with the hunters; and, it is Roger who sharpens on both ends the stick that will impale Ralph if the hunters catch him.
Clearly, Roger represents pure savagery, the innate evil in human nature. While he still wears some vestiges of society, he hesitates; however, as he remains on the island and can wear a mask and hunt with Jack, he gives license to his sadistic and heinous acts on a land free from society--a place pristine and unprotected from the "evil that men do" as Marc Antony says in "Julius Caesar."
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