Roger Lord Of The Flies Character Analysis

Words: 536
Pages: 3

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses the characters Roger who is a mindless savage and Jack who has a lust for power to demonstrate how when unsupervised human instinct takes over and savagery arises.
Both Jack and Roger harbor violent natures along with remaining great testimonies of how human nature takes over when law and order have diminished. The character Roger takes the top spot of one of the most violent characters displaying psychopathic tendencies toward the end of the story. Early on Roger has cruel intentions because he grabbed some stones and “began to throw them. Yet there was a space around Henry” (62). Roger remains held back by the teachings of his former life whether it be church or by family morals, but Roger seems
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Jack from the beginning comes across as a borderline sadistic character when he leads a party to kill a pig and returns saying “There was lashings of blood. . .you should have seen it” (69). Jack, similar to Roger, had not completely given into the bestial instincts but walking the line between savage and partially civilized. While Jack has yet to cross the line into a complete brute we see the ever present thirst for violence that has reappeared throughout the novel since the beginning; except at this stage the violent nature escalates to new heights. The boys return from a pig killing without the intent to eat the pig they kill. Illustrated when Golding writes “Behind them on the grass the headless and paunched body of a sow lay where they had dropped it” (176). Jack has merged into complete savagery now by leading hunts to recklessly kill pigs just for the fun of it not thinking twice about the kill. This chilling quote about the dead sow shows how barbaric the boys have become, they no longer kill for the need of food they kill for the sport not caring about the sow, merely savagely killing whatever they feel the need to kill.
The story Lord of the Flies remains a prolific piece of literature describing violent events to prove a point. The novel proves humanity needs carefully placed laws to keep law and order while providing