Piggy Lord Of The Flies Comparison Essay

"Piggy saw the smile and misinterpreted it as friendliness. 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 labour." (Golding 68)

A character in a novel can represent a larger idea in society. In William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, each character is illustrated to represent a larger idea in society. Ralph represents democracy, Jack represents savagery, and Piggy represents a scientific approach.

In the book there is conch which gives the beholder of it power over the rest of the group. Jack knows that the group is torn on who should be their leader, so he does whatever is necessary to get the conch and control the group. Jack knows that the only way to do this is to make the group turn against Ralph. With power on his mind his begins to belittle Ralph and make the group think Ralph hasn’t been a good leader. This happens when Jack says, “Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people what to do. You can't hunt, you can't sing” (Golding 238). The group then begins to trust Jack because Ralph seems inferior compared to him. Once Jack has this power he begins to think that everyone who isn’t with him is against him. This leads to Jack killing Piggy to stop and uprising from him and Ralph. There is no way that a 13 year old boy would kill another classmate unless he was fueled with power like Macbeth was. Jack isn’t the only one in the book to let power get the best of him, Ralph also falls victim to it. Ralph begins to disrespect his best friend on the island Piggy when the book says “Ralph pushed Piggy to one side. ‘I was chief and you were going to do what I said’” (Golding 132). This quote shows how Ralph is willing to harm someone he care about just to show everyone including Piggy how powerful he truly is. Both Ralph and Jack let power cloud their judgement which

When Piggy is “crushed” and brings it up to him, Ralph reluctantly decides against “further insult”(27) and the dismisses him. Even Piggy, poor rational, bullied, bespectacled Piggy is aggressive in his mannerisms: “He said scornfully”, “Piggy watched him in disgust”(46), “daring, indignant, Piggy took the conch”(53), “Piggy lost his temper”(56), “cried Piggy indignantly”(57). And that’s just eleven pages. This isn’t only seen in the main characters. Towards the beginning of the book, the boys(first Ralph and Simon and then others) make fun of Jack for not be able to murder a pig. In other words, scorning him because he wasn’t violent enough. Furthermore, their scorn hurts Jack’s ego, resulting in this response: “he snatched his knife out of the sheath and slammed it into a tree trunk. Next time there would be no mercy. He looked round fiercely, daring them to contradict.” (Golding 36) In Chapter 2, the majority surrounds Piggy to steal his glasses, which shows aggression and apathy. At the end of the book, everyone who isn’t dead(or Ralph) is in Jack’s tribe. With quotes such as, “Roger admired. ‘He’s a proper chief, isn’t he?’” when talking about boulder weaponry and ‘[Jack] got angry and made us tie Wilfred up. He’s been’—he giggled excitedly— ‘he’s been tied for hours,

William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a novel about a group of boys who are lost on a deserted island and must do what they can to survive. At the beginning of the novel, two of the boys, Ralph and Jack, become leaders. These differences will form the main conflict in the story. The differences will cause them to hate each other and the anger that results is a recurring part of the plot throughout the novel. These two boys can be compared by the way they change, the reason for their actions, and the way they use or abuse power.

In contrast t o the novel, Ralph would constantly support piggy, and stick up for him when he was being bullied.

Due to the prejudice of one person, the feeling of hatred arises inside, causing people to be isolated from others. Piggy was stranded on the island like all the other boys were and except for his physical difference, he is no different from Jack, who also has ideas for them to survive on the island. On page 51, the dialogue “We want meat” shows that Jack’s idea of needing meat is surprisingly useful because all the boys needed food to survive and Jack is the only one who is truly passionate about it, whereas Ralph is more focused on getting rescued (Golding). Just because Jack has presented a good idea, it does not mean that he has a right to bully Piggy.

He is often subject to harassment because of his weight. When taking roll call, Ralph introduces him as Piggy, so that “ a storm of laughter arose and even the tiniest child joined in” (Golding 14). As shown by this quote, even the youngest boys think they are better than Piggy because they aren’t chubby like him. He is much heavier than the other boys, which is one of the factors that sets him apart. He is never even given a chance to introduce himself; he is just given a nickname that exploits his weight. After this, Piggy never even tries to properly introduce himself. He knows that whatever name he gives will be rejected by the boys who view themselves as superior to him. Those who are isolated are also commonly made victims of. Once his tribe abandons him, Ralph is warned by Samneric about Roger and Jack. Eric says “‘They hate you, Ralph. They're going to do you. They're going to hunt you tomorrow”” (170). At this time, Ralph is considerably weaker than he was at the beginning of the story. He has no tribe to protect him, aside from a few littluns. Piggy and Simon are both dead, and Samneric now are joined with Jack’s tribe. Because of this, Jack can more easily target and kill Ralph.

     Piggy in the beginning of the book was using his common sense, he was intelligent, he knew what was right from wrong, and he could condone things that made him angry easily. In the beginning of the book, (pg. ) Ralph told everyone his name was Piggy even though Piggy specifically told Ralph that he didn't like to be called that name Piggy later condoned Ralph's action with great ease. Piggy's action's and behavior depended on his glasses. Piggy and his glasses symbolized intelligence, he represents the rational side of civilization. With the glasses it seemed as though Piggy made all the right choices, and he helped Ralph know what needed to be done with the tribe. Without his

Imagine the many dangers of being stranded on a desolate island. There is a chance of starvation, severe sunburn or sicknesses, and strange animals. The idea of being a danger to yourself does not usually cross a person's mind when thinking about this unimaginable situation. Being in such horrible conditions would make anyone start to go a little crazy, especially if they were young and immature. The little boys in Lord of The Flies show the true nature in humanity when times become desperate and cut throat. The main topic of this essay is to focus on similarities and differences of how two groups of boys, Piggy & Ralph and Jack & Roger, behave when they become stranded on an island and how they act to survive.

When Jack slaps Piggy and purposely breaks his glasses, Ralph calls it "A dirty trick." (p. 76) This shows Jack's selfishness and his failure to respect other people, while at the same time Ralph's concern is understand others. Ralph manages to treat each boy equally with his own form of control while Jack treats the boys, especially Piggy lower. After hunting, the group sits down to eat and Jack gives everyone a share except for Piggy. When Piggy asks for some, Jack says, "You didn't hunt." (p. 78) Neither Ralph or many of the littluns hunted but they still got their portion of meat. This was only being directed to Piggy. Jack's behavior towards Piggy shows that he is unable to understand other people. A good leader would have taken care of all his/her group. Ralph understands that he must treat everyone equal or he will not be respected and is a better leader than Jack because of this knowledge.

He is eventually chosen as leader on account of his many positive qualities. He maintains a conflict with Jack throughout the entire novel, trying to keep order while Jack isn't as dedicated to it. The next person you meet in the story is a short fat boy, who wears spectacles. He is the most intellectual boy on the island, but since he has no social skills, he is usually in the background trying to maintain the peace. Together Ralph and Piggy represent the struggle for order and democracy.

Secondly, Ralph is not only a rational leader but also a moral person, who cleverly keeps the fairness in his group. “Ralph, looking more understanding at Piggy, saw that he was hurt and crushed. He hovered between the two courses of apology or further insult ‘Better Piggy than Fatty” (25). Ralph is sincere and considerate for other people. He apparently understand their feeling and particularly shows his sympathy for Piggy. Ralph is sensible enough to realize that everyone deserves to be respected. He believes no one should have to put up with being tormented. Ralph gently gains others’ support by treating them equally, showing his compassion and ability to empathize with them. Opposite to Ralph, Jack is immoral, violent and condescending. “He’s going to beat Wilfred” (159). He does not care or understand the natural equality of

The author may have done this on purpose to highlight that heroes don’t have to posses a shining suit of armor. In the world today, the author is trying to tell us that humans don’t have to be a “Ralph” to make a difference. Today, humans always complain about things, but don’t do anything to help better what they believe in. Ralph may have had certain traits Piggy lacked, but the one thing Piggy had that no one else did was have a broad outlook. Ralph would say things like…. , and Jack would say things like…. Piggy was a little different from both of them. He almost never showed a negative attitude, even when he was all alone with Ralph and everyone else had abandoned him to go join Jack’s

Ralph is the one that represents rule and order to make a civilization work(Oldsey and Weintraub 3).He has a very democratic way of thinking. Ralph is a tall pale boy who is almost twelve. He is good looking but he is definitely more of a speaker than a thinker. Ralph is voted as being the leader by the other boys on the island. The first time they even talk about having a leader is in the beginning when Ralph says,“‘Seems to me we ought to have a chief to decide things’”(Golding 22). Little did he know that he would be the one to end up being the leader. There is a focused slide of Ralph shown a whole lot in this story. Not to mention that he has the conch which was a horn type shell used to call attention. his looks also play a big role in his power (Olsen 8). Ralph does believes in order. Piggy establishes order at the begin when he finds the conch. They end up deciding that they can use this conch to their benefit. Ralph says,”we can use this to call the others” (Golding 16). By blowing into this conch it drew attention to the