Roger can be seen as a symbol of savagery on the island because of his actions of throwing rocks, torture, and most importantly, murder. Before anything, symbolism is “the practice of representing things by symbols” (“symbolism”), basically, it is when something in any type of art is being used to represent something with a bigger, deeper meaning. Using the beginning of the book as a first example of Roger being a symbol of savagery, some littluns were sitting on the beach and Roger is watching over them in a bush. After a couple of minutes, a boy named Henry is left alone squatting and being watched. Roger then begins to throw rocks at him but missed on purpose, the author then explains why Roger misses saying, “There was a space round Henry, …show more content…
He knows throwing rocks at other people isn’t right, but with no authority, he’s exploring the idea of not having consequences for his actions. The reader can point out Rodgers hostile behavior early on in the book. Another example, when Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric go to confront Jack and his tribe to get Piggy's glasses back, the narrator describes the setting with Roger standing guard overlooking Castle Rock, Ralph trying to get closer to the tribe without being attacked, and Piggy standing back behind Ralph, afraid. Roger then starts throwing rocks with one hand, like earlier in the book, and the other resting on the lever that can release a huge rock to fall off the cliff. As Ralph and Jack’s argument gets louder and louder, the author describes Roger during the arguement saying, “High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever” (Golding 180), meaning that Roger isn’t thinking very clearly when he releases the rock. At this point in the book, Roger is his true self, he doesn’t know what’s wrong or right and does what he wants. His true self, unfortunately, ends up committing a