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Lord of the Flies: We Hate Piggy
In many novels there's usually a character the reader loves to hate.
Whether that character be a loser, a loner, or someone who's just chubby, we
all have made fun of that particular person at least once in our lives.
Throughout William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, he illustrates the joy
of readers in hating Piggy's character.
In the beginning of the novel, when Ralph meets Piggy after the plane
crash, Piggy regretfully tells Ralph what the kids used to call him at school, “
They used to call me ‘Piggy'.”(1) Ralph then shrieks with laughter and makes
fun of Piggy's nickname, “Piggy! Piggy!”(2) Ralph goes on and on with giving
Piggy a bad time, just as kids normally would. This could be Ralph's way of
trying to distract himself from the reality of the airplane smashup. By the
author's description of Piggy and the contents of Piggy's talks, all of us have
a good idea of how he looks like and how he acts. We can all relate to him as
that ‘fat nerd' that always sat alone in the cafeteria. We all had nicknames
for the ‘loner'. We knew deep down that this was a bad thing to do but we
enjoyed putting him or her down.
Piggy is smarter than most of the survivors. You could see this because
he was aware of the situation around him whereas Ralph enjoyed the freedom. It
was Piggy's idea to write down all of the survivors' names and he knew where to
put the hole in the conch and what it could be used for. Piggy is also clever
in which when he is asked to do something physical, whether it would be
exercise or hard labour, he says he cannot do it because of his asthma, but
most people could see that he is lying. An example of this is when he was
afraid to swim.
“Piggy tip-toed down the sandy side of the pool, and
sat there up to his neck in water smiling proudly at
Ralph.
‘ Aren't you going to swim? '
Piggy shook his head.
‘I can't swim. I wasn't allowed. My asthma----'
‘Sucks to your ass-mar!' ”(3)
Ralph could easily tell that Piggy was lying, and whimping out.
Piggy is different from the other survivors, he is considered as an
outsider. His body is different, he also thinks different from the other boys.
At first he is the only one talking about and wanting to get rescued, yet all
the other boys are either happy with their freedom and exploring the island or
they're thinking about hunting. Piggy knows the actual life and death situation
upon the group, when he talks about the death of the pilots.
“ ‘They're all dead,' said Piggy, ‘an' this is
an island. Nobody don't know we're here. Your
dad don't know, nobody don't know----'
His lips quivered and the spectacles were dimmed
with mist.
‘We may stay here till we die.' ”(4)
This talk did overcome the boys with concern, but they soon forgot it and
thought nothing of it.
Jack is the obvious one who goes too far in teasing Piggy. At first it
was just mild teasing, calling him names, mostly verbal abuse. Later in time,
Jack and his own separate clan, killed a pig and invited Ralph's group for a
feast. At the feast Piggy was the only one without meat. Hungry, he spoke.
“ ‘Aren't I having none?'
Jack had meant to leave him in doubt, as an
assertion of power; but Piggy by advertising
his omission mad more cruelty necessary.
‘You didn't hunt.' ”(5)
Later Simon gave his meat to Piggy, and Jack went into a rage, yelling at Simon
that he got meat for him, not Piggy. Later in the Novel, when Ralph and Piggy
came to confront Jack about Simon's death, Roger did the unexplainable when he
pushed a large boulder over a cliff and onto Piggy. Yet everybody thought that
this seemed the right thing to do except for Ralph was the only one who was
sane and thought differently. Ralph realized that they had gone too far.
Throughout William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, he illustrates
the joy of readers in hating Piggy's character. In many forms of entertainment
such as movies, books and television shows, there has always been a character
like Piggy .Everybody has a little evil inside and we seem to take it out on a
character like Piggy and Mr. William Golding has shown us that we enjoy hating
these kind of characters and that things will probably never change.
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