Piggy As The Smartest In Lord Of The Flies

No one wants to listen to someone who comes across as if they think they’re smarter than you, especially when they look like a weak nerd. In moments of crisis, people don’t gravitate towards following the weak one even if they may be the smartest; they weed out the person who is the strongest and has the best leadership qualities, even if they may not know what they are doing. This is the case in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, where a group of young boys become stranded on a deserted island with no adults. Their airplane had been shot down as they were flying from England to a safer place, for England was engaged in war. In Lord of the Flies, we quickly identify the character Piggy as the smartest, yet the boys frequently ignore and abuse him, leaving him useful only in the sense of advancing the themes of the novel.
The boys hardly listen to Piggy because he is an outsider. The most obvious reason the boys consider him an outsider is because of his appearance. Piggy is fat, has asthma, and wears glasses, while everyone else is slim with no disabilities. In the very beginning of the book the boys recognized Piggy as an outsider, taunting him and calling him names. “He’s not Fatty,” cried Ralph, “his real name’s Piggy!” Piggy is also the parent of the group, always criticizing and muttering about how immature the others

The boys refuse to listen to him because he is an outsider and attempts to impose his parent-like nature upon them, which they dislike because they have finally escaped the power adults had over them. He is at the stem of the other’s road to savagery, and once he dies the island turns to complete chaos with no hope of turning back. Piggy represents the authority and morals the boys had left behind when they crashed, and the boys hated him for it because he is a constant reminder of everything they’ve ever