Humans can be very strange and sometimes cruel. This is illustrated perfectly in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a story about a group of boys that are stranded on an isolated island. In the boys’ attempt to survive and be rescued, their animal natures get the best of them. Chaos ensues, resulting in the deaths of two boys as well as countless injuries. Throughout the story there is one boy, however, that remains rational and keeps his head. That character is Piggy. Piggy is fat, and this makes him the subject of physical abuse because of limited mobility as well as asthma. He is also subject to verbal abuse such as his nickname “Piggy” and whenever he reminds the others about his asthma, they give him the invariable reply “Sucks to …show more content…
When Ralph and some other boys are out hunting for meat, it begins to get dark. Ralph wants to go back to camp rather than risk going back in the dark, but the others want to stay out and tell him he's being like Piggy and spoiling all the fun. The boys are abusive of Piggy throughout the story, but what they don’t realize is that they depend on him for their survival. He keeps Ralph and several other leader boys sane, who in turn help keep everyone sane. They also depend on him because of his glasses, which they need to make fires. The abuse gets worse as the story progresses, finally ending in one of the boys killing Piggy by rolling a boulder off a cliff and onto him. This happens when he is trying to talk sense into the boys. He says: “Which is better, law and rescue or hunting and breaking things up?” [214] The rock is dropped right after this. Piggy is a good example of a typical nerd. He is physically challenged and has more intelligence than any other boy. Throughout the thunderstorm of a plot, he is the grounding wire that keeps most of the group alive. One of the strangest parts of Lord of the Flies is how despite the boys’ dependance on Piggy, they treat him like a pariah to be despised and
Without cloudy days the sun wouldn’t be appreciated as much. In Lord of The Flies, the character Piggy acts as a foil to Ralph, the main character, to accentuate how great a leader he is. This is shown through their appearances, how they interact with each other, and the state they are in by the end of the novel. The relationship the two share illuminates the the meaning the book’s meaning that / a person has to be the best to survive in society or lack thereof. / a person can’t have to many flaws otherwise You need to stay civilized to survive. Only the best of the best can survive in society.
Piggy lectured them by asking how they could " expect to be rescued if [they] don't put first things first and act proper?" (45), which is something they did not want to hear, this was proven time and time again when the boys not let him speak without interruption even when he had the conch shell. Piggy's greatest asset was also his weakest point; the only way he could relate to the other boys was at an intellectual level, whereas the other boys could only relate on an emotional level. Ironically, in spite of his intelligence and logic, rational thought, from the beginning of the novel, Piggy was a social outcast.
Piggy, though not the most memorable in The Lord of the Flies, resonated the most whilst reading this book. Piggy is the stereotypical nerdy kid who seems to be perpetually bullied, even when he is on a deserted island. He has pinkish skin with glasses and asthma with a belly that ate perhaps too much candy from his aunt’s candy shop. While Piggy is almost useless physically, he is very strong mentally, and proves this when he formulates the idea of the conch, but is too weak to blow into it and call everyone. Piggy seems socially awkward, as if he hasn’t spent much times with his fellow peers and rather passed the time with the adults in this life. We see this when Piggy frequently parrots his aunt’s advice such as “My auntie told me not to run… on account of my
In Lord of the Flies, the character of Piggy was mistreated a lot by the other boys. Piggy was a boy from England just like all the other boys at his old school everyone would call him Piggy even though he wanted them to stop calling him that. Piggy had great ideas, but no one listens to Piggy because of who he is. Back in England, Piggy lived with his aunt, who owned a candy store, in which he could eat all the candy he wanted. His aunt would avoid letting him do anything physical making him fat. While Piggy is just a regular boy on the island he is often abused and the other boys rarely listen to him, for what reason, and also Golding uses Piggy to advance the novel also.
When thinking about how Piggy would be if he was alive would be quite difficult to think of. There are other things to think about like would he change because of this experience? Would he ever learn to voice his opinion and to learn to be a leader? But right now, basing it off on how Piggy is, it doesn’t seem like he’d ever be a leader considering the simple fact that he can’t get others to respect
In the book, Lord of the Flies, the character Piggy is seen as an outcast. Piggy is different in his looks, intellect, and role in the group. There are many instances within the book to further show his experience on and off the island to be different from the rest of the boys. Because of the differences from Piggy to the rest of the boys, Piggy is shown as more of an outsider or outcast throughout the book.
Since Piggy is always made fun of, he wants to be respected by the boys, he is sick of being the one they pick on, when he has done nothing that will make them hate him. “There had grown up tacitly
This is mainly because Piggy has little physical ability and can't work too hard his explanation is, "on account of my asthma" (pg. 4). But, throughout the story, he is and advisor to Ralph and many good ideas come from him like making a list of people to keep role. Piggy being the advisor to the leader continues to remind Ralph about the fire and to keep everyone civilized. He kept true to his role even after the groups split up and Ralph's group was struggling to keep the fire going, he still continued to be an advisor and said he couldn't go find
He does not want to be violent or to bring harm to anyone. He is not harmful to anyone until the night Simon dies. Piggy tries to deny any involvement in the death of Simon. There is a small group of boys who claim they were in the outer circle of boys, but because of this it makes it obvious they were involved. Piggy now says, “It was dark. There was that-that bloody dance. There was lightning and thunder and rain. We was scared!”(Golding 156) Piggy knows they were involved but he still doesn’t want to accept it for reality. Again Piggy tries to get everyone else to believe what he is saying to be true, “Look, Ralph. We got to forget this. We can’t do no good thinking about it, see?”(Golding 157) Now he wants Ralph to forget everything. If Ralph continues to dwell on the fact that he was involved in the death of Simon he will never move on or get back to what they really need to be focusing on which is their
In the book ¨Lord of the Flies¨ by William Golding, the character Piggy was very weak and unhelpful. Piggy had no say in anything and when he tried to talk everyone ignored him or was rude towards him. He did not stand up for himself much but when he did, still nobody respected him like they did Ralph or Jack. Piggy is weak, unhelpful, but is symbolized as power for Ralph because without him, he has nobody and is powerless. Piggy was just there for his specs to be used to make fires to cook meat and make a signal to possibly be rescued. He was not that necessary to the novel seeing how he was a weak character.
Piggy stays somewhat static as a good and civilized boy, like some others (e.g. Simon). However, Piggy’s character change involves his entitlement of civility and his specific separation from the rest of the boys. “‘Like kids!’ he said scornfully. ‘Acting like a crowd of kids!’” (38). This quote exhibits Piggy’s nature of judgment over the other boys’ rashness and establishes his entitlement over the other boys early on. This creates a barrier of sorts, as Piggy might not feel tempted to interact the same way because he is “better than that.” Piggy is also directly characterized as the outsider of the group: “There had grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor” (65). In a sense, Piggy is separated from the overall group of boys by his physical and character traits. Piggy also has this emphasized character trait of being myopic. Once Piggy’s specs are destroyed, not only is Piggy literally blind but symbolically as well. This, in turn, means the group is also blind, as Piggy was the only character that seemed to provide a substantial amount of rational thinking and ideas. This leads to irrational thoughts to flow free, like Jack’s ideology of madness and
First, Piggy lacks what a necessary trait in any successful leader: charisma. He is socially awkward, and he has a hard time fitting in with the other boys his age. The boys have a hard time seeing anyone other than an overweight boy with big "specs". Piggy is also intellectually superior to the other boys. He has the rationale of an adult and is easily able to see the difference between what the boys should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing.
Despite being frequently made fun of, Piggy always seems to like the attention, even if it is negative attention. When Ralph finds out that the heavy boy stuck on the island with him is called ‘Piggy,’ he is extremely amused. Although this was a rude and unkind nickname, “Piggy grinned reluctantly, pleased despite himself even at this much recognition”. In my opinion, Piggy appreciates any attention that he receives because he may have not been noticed at school. This may be why Piggy feels a sense of pride when he is noticed, even if it is in a negative or rude way. Piggy also allows himself to be controlled and pushed around by the other boys. I wonder why he allows this to happen. Does Piggy just want to be more liked by
Piggy just wanted some recognition but it said, “They looked at him with eyes that lacked interest in what they saw...” The boys really do not care for Piggy and brush him off. It also says, “Unwillingly Ralph turned away from the splendid, awful sight,” when Piggy tried to talk to him. He wouldn’t have done this to anyone else, but he did not want to hear what Piggy had to say. They act like he is a bug, only acknowledging him when he does not go away. They are annoyed with. From the way the boys act towards Piggy to way he acts shows how awfully he is
A “rock [that] struck [Piggy] a glancing blow from chin to knee” caused Piggy’s death (Golding 181). Piggy did not see the rock coming because he was not wearing his glasses. When the boulder hit him, he was holding the conch, and it was destroyed. Piggy’s death represents the boys’ lack of desire to remain civilized because Piggy was not wearing his glasses at the time of his death. The destruction of the conch by the boulder represents the boys becoming full savages who have no civilized authority. Roger killed Piggy on purpose and “with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all of his weight on the lever” which caused the boulder to roll down the hill (Golding 180). The fact that the boys killed Piggy on purpose shows that they wanted to be savage. By killing Piggy, they killed their civilization, their will to be civilized, and their civilized