Piggy Confidants

While trapped on an island full of little boys, some characters have to step up and take point while others are mere confidants who are mistreated and abused. Just like the real world, many people are left out and rejected but they still hold a place in society. Piggy, a young boy on the island, is treated poorly from the very beginning but yet he is known as the scientific, rational side of the civilization portrayed in Lord of the Flies. He quickly becomes Ralph’s confidant but serves a greater purpose in the book by giving rational insight and bright ideas on survival and also someone to pick on to increase insecurities and self power.

Piggy served as Ralph’s lieutenant from the beginning to the end. They started together finding the conch,

He focused on the important things that would keep a civilized society like rules and guidelines. In the very beginning Piggy sought out to make a census before everyone ran to the mountain to create a fire. Unfortunately he couldn’t even complete his task before they lost a boy in the forest fire. “That little ‘un... him with a mark on his face, I don’t see him. Where is he now (Golding 46)?” He reminds the boys that they need to think before they act otherwise bad things will happen, like losing boys. Piggy addresses the boys like he is an adult and they are the misbehaving children. He repeatedly says they are “Acting like a crowd of kids (Golding 38)!” “Like a pack of kids (Golding 45)!” Ralph even noticed Piggy’s voice of reason in chapter 7 when he was climbing the mountain “Now that his physical voice was silent his inner voice of reason was heard… Piggy was calling him a kid (Golding 122).” Piggy tries to explain to the boys that they need to act like adults to survive otherwise things will get out of hand. That’s why Piggy pushed the conch concept so much. Piggy’s favorite rule was whoever has the conch will be the only one to talk. Throughout the whole book he would scream “I have the conch (Golding 42, 45, 82, 90, 101, and 180)!” His last words included I have the conch. Piggy believed that with the conch he had a right to speak. Without the conch, Piggy still continued his voice of reason. When the beast terror was brought up, Piggy immediately turned the assumption down knowing a beast was not a scientific idea. “Life is scientific…. I know there isn’t no beast (Golding 82)!” He seconds Ralphs notions that a beast could not survive on an island this small. Using rational solutions, Piggy says it just doesn’t make sense to have a beast or ghosts on the island. Because he uses scientific views on how to be adults and to make sense of the beasts, Piggy is the voice of reason on the