Piggy's Monologue

The first person for Piggy to meet was Ralph, telling him the secret of what he used to be called.

“We have lots of assemblies. Everybody enjoys speaking and being together. We decide things. But they don’t get done” (85).

In Lord of the Flies, a major theme that was expressed was leadership. Throughout the whole book someone was always in charge to lead the others. “The others” referring to the followers. A leader is one who possesses the power to lead others whilst the follower just travels behind the leader. A very obvious follower in the novel would have to be Piggy. He never got to express his views on things without the conch yet even with it no one wanted to hear him. No one looked up to him nor looked for him like someone would with a leader. He was always be by Ralph’s side obliging to what he says considering Ralph’s views were like his, yet Ralph was better at convincing others to do so as well.

The character speaking in the quote is being called by the insecurity of his nickname, Piggy. The other kids did not bother asking his real name because they cannot see him past his image which is being a fat boy. Piggy’s identity and personality towards the others was determined by his image which is dense do to the fact that they do not acknowledge his intelligence and knowledge of survival because he is not considered to be fun causing him to be a social outcast his intelligence is not noticed by the others.

Piggy plays a great role in chapters 7-8. In chapter 7, the boys all want to go on pig-hunt, but decide that they can't leave the littleuns alone with Piggy for the whole night, and they send Simon to tell Piggy that "they will be back after dark". Piggy is the only one who doesn't participate in the hunt, showing that he does not have the savage instinct, and does not want to spill blood. " 'We musn't let anything happen to Piggy, must we?' Ralph tapped his teeth with the dirty point of Eric's spear. '

As John Locke once said, “Humans have the natural ability to reason,” this seems to resonate a lot with the idea of government and the ability for everyone to be rational in order to protect our society. In modern times, reasoning mostly achieves the idea of solving a problem without harming others, and because human nature is innately more harmful and abrupt, this causes much trouble within society. In the novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Golding shows how without proper reason and government, there will be a corruption of society, as seen with the evolution of Piggy as a character.

Have you ever met a man without a reason did you ever catch him blind reading raps while he was killing ‘em?

Again, I found myself in deep waters, losing myself into that strange mood of speculation that was so foreign to me. However, thought is a valuable thing a chief needs, but the trouble is I can’t think, not like Piggy. For all his physique, Piggy has brains, unlike the biguns he understands the importance of the fire and even much more. “I could go step by step inside that fat head of his, only Piggy was no chief” (71) because not only does he lack the courage, but also the respect from the biguns. Without saying, there has grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy is an outsider, not only by accent, but by fat, and ass-mar.

An outsider is a person who is rejected by others due to being unusual or peculiar. Often that people who are outcast are ostracized and shunned. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a novel about how young boys unattended on an island become savage and corrupt as they try to get back home. The novel explores the details of Piggy, one of the major characters, who is very different from the rest of the boys. Annoying and whiny, he is eventually ostracized by most of the other boys who think he is an unnecessary burden to their survival. Piggy is often bullied and made fun of for his obese body and intelligence. There are an abundance of adjectives that can be used to describe Piggy, but the one word that fits Piggy the most is outsider.

I, Ralph, am writing this letter to ask you to allow me to be your leader and your chief. I am asking for your vote. I believe I will be able to fulfill your expectations as a leader. I ask you that even though I am a kid just like you guys that I am respected. I promise you that I will take all of your opinions, concerns, and ideas into consideration. I have some ideas of my own. You all see where we have landed, so this means that this is most likely where we will be living until we are rescued, and I am definitely planning on being rescued. I think that we should have an item to use when somebody’s talking. Like how in school how we raise our hands, but here, we’ll have

Jack’s selfishness did not take long to affect their chances to be saved, and get home. All of the boys had their mind set on getting back home and staying on task, except for Jack. They made a fire in hope for ships passing by to save them; they had shifts to watch over the fire, and Jack and his hunters did not watch over the fire when it was their

"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)

Now that Jack is the new leader, he became increasingly greedy and mean and exiled Ralph and Piggy from the rest of the group and left them with nothing, except the symbolic origin of fire, Piggy’s glasses. But instead of using fire to divide the group they really needed everyone to come together to create a controlled fire so they can get off the island. While Ralph and Piggy were away Jack tried to create a signal fire, but instead he created a bonfire that ended up burning a quarter of the island down. Piggy walks up to Jack and told him (because he was mad): “‘You got your small fire all right.’ ...the boys were falling still and silent, feeling the beginnings of awe at the power set free below them” (55). Jack knew they needed a fire, but in reality Jack did not understand how destructive a fire can be, and ended up killing one of the members of the group with the fire he started. With the group divided and life in danger, the symbolic meaning of fire is displayed in this quote because it demonstrates the order and or chaos that is on the island and how nearly all of the social structure on the island could be lost as quickly as the time it takes to snap Piggy’s glasses in half.

“We, we, we need help!” cried the little pig. Little Pig was frantically running straight into the lavish main house to his mamma. Mama quickly responded by patching Little Pig up and forgetting to ask questions. Little pig tried to relay the events to Mama pig, but he may have forgot a few details. He began now crying, “a trapper had found him and he had tripped over a snare that’s how I got cut, I wish that I could remember his face.”

Ralph concentrates on being rescued and Jack goes along taking on the responsibility that he and his choir will mind the fire. “We’ll be responsible for keeping the fire going-”, (Page 38) but while Ralph remains focused on being rescued, Jack’s new-found interest in hunting leads him to forget about rescue. “Jack had to think for a moment before he could remember what rescue was. “Rescue? Yes, of course! All the same, I’d like to catch a pig first-.” (Page 58) This also starts to show that Jack has entered the realm of savagery.