Intrinsic Darkness - Extrinsic light.


	"The yelling ceased, and Samneric lay looking up in quiet terror. Roger advanced 
upon them as one wielding nameless authority" (Golding, 182). In William Golding's Lord of 
the Flies, a plane crashes on an uninhabited island leaving a plane full of young, British 
schoolboys to fend for themselves without the aid or supervision of adults. Through the 
novel, the effects of civilization on the children first waver, and then dissolve completely. 
With no character is this effect seen more clearly than with Roger. Roger is the right hand 
of Jack, who is the enemy of Ralph, the protagonist. As the book progresses, Roger becomes 
less and less civil, while his savagery knows know bounds. The book proves that there is "a 
Nature inimical to the conscious personality of man" (208).

	In the beginning, the boys are innocent and try to act refined and grown up. The 
teachings of society are deeply ingrained into the boys' everyday lives. "Roger gathered a 
handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space around Henry, perhaps six 
yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw" (62). Roger cannot hit the Henry with the 
stones because of the teachings of the civilized world. The manner in which Roger was 
brought up taught him that to cause anyone pain was not the proper way to act. His 
upbringing in society gives Henry an invisible and impenetrable barrier that protects him, 
and everyone, else from the stones that would be thrown. Over time, however, this barrier 
will begin to lose its strength and eventually a stone will be its destruction.

	Jack leads the boys in this path to destruction. He leads the metamorphosis from 
civil to savage. Jack paints his face to hide the civility, Jack leads them in the hunt, 
Jack leads the insurrection against Ralph and his group; Jack is the leader into the heart 
of human nature. And Roger is always there by his side.  Jack leads, and Roger will always 
follow because he enjoys the freedom to act how he wants, not according to what society 
deems as proper. These barbarous instincts grow and gain power and momentum within Roger as 
he follows Jack in the ways of the Lord of the Flies. These primal urges continue to grow 
until they take over what once was ruled by the laws, ideologies, restrictions, and freedoms 
of society.

	In the end, Roger is fully savage. He has no restraints. The absence of allows his 
true nature to spew forth from what was once and innocent boy. "High overhead, Roger, with 
a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever…The rock struck Piggy 
a glancing blow to the chin and knee…Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the 
square red rock in the sea" (181). Roger destroys the limitations society had on the boys 
with one push of a lever, with one roll of a stone. Roger and the rest are truly savage now 
that they have killed a human being. Roger, the one who introduces the barrier of protection 
with the throw of a stone, now demolishes it with the irresistible force known as human 
nature. 

	Within man, there is a darkness that knows no depths and conflicts with the 
decisions that are made within civilized society. This darkness waxes and wanes inside the 
heart of man and burns itself into every fiber of being, and consuming anything that may 
dare to oppose it. Yet, that is what happens. Man's weapon against his own nature is the 
society that he creates. The evil within man is only held back by the society that it 
creates, and that thread may break at any moment.