Lord of the Flies Roger Character Study

Roger is one of the antagonists in the novel, Lord of the Flies, and the decisions that he makes have major impact on the unfolding of the story. He is introduced as a slightly built boy who is shy, secretive and keeps to himself. Rather than let tinkers dam automatically become the leader, Roger suggests that they have a vote. This demonstrates how at the bring down he was a civilized person who knew what was proper and just to do, preferably than simply allowing the loudest voice to get their way. Roger is shown to be a bully as he constantly picks on the littluns by destroying their sandcastles, throwing sand in their eyes and throwing rocks at them.By Rogers own nature he really wanted to hit the boys with the stones barely was held back by baseball clubs conditioning of his behavior and as a result missed every time. In the hunt his true sadistic nature is further evidenced by his excessive violence towards the pig. This all demonstrates that he had made a conscious decisio n to follow Jack rather than Ralph as this allowed him to foster his dark uses even though he knew that this was morally wrong. He chose to be involved in the frenzy that lead to the brutal despatch of Simon and afterwards showed no remorse for his actions.Therefore civilization was being removed as an inhibiting factor and Roger became increasingly more primitive and savage in his behaviour. When Roger hears of Jacks intentions to beat Wilfred he hurries back to the tribe so that he can torture him himself, showing the further lost of any control society once had on him. When he was looking down at Piggy from his vantage point at Castle Rock, his only thoughts about Piggy were that he was a bag of fat, highlighting Rogerss now clearly evident complete lack of empathy for others.By this stage Roger is well and truly a savage with no more restraints of civilization and because of this he gave into his sadistic urges and pushed the boulder off the cliff, killing Piggy. In dealing wi th newly captive Sam and Eric, Roger asserts sanction through violence and forces them to join the tribe and tell him of Ralphs whereabouts, expressing his disregard for conventional authority. The next day Roger sets out with Jack on the hunt for Ralph with the intention of killing him and impaling him so that he can offer him to the Beast.At this point Roger exemplifies the complete breakdown of the boys behaviour from a civilized Christian background to a Pagan tribe. However he is stopped utterly in his tracks when the naval officer appears and he is dragged back to reality. In a flash the sight of a representative of civilisation from a screaming savage and has brought back all the memories of humanity. Rogerss decisions reflect how his character gradually disintegrated under the breakdown of order. To me Roger is a despicable and reprehensible character who illustrates the worst aspects of humanity.