Piggy Lord Of The Flies Quote Analysis

In the fiction novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, English schoolboys 6-12 years old crash land in a plane on an uninhabited island as they leave their war-torn country. An older boy named Piggy takes charge of organizing the boys, however, Piggy’s days of leadership are short-numbered as others soon cast his opinions aside believing they are unnecessary worries. As a result of his death symbolizing the end of all reason, Piggy illustrates the negative effects of lacking an open mind to create a system of rules in society. In an environment that is rapidly changing from seemingly innocent boys to savage animals, Piggy is able to keep his sanity and common sense that helped suppress the amount of chaos caused by the boys up until his

It provides one with more worries about the logistics of the issue rather than fixing the problem. Many of the boys are under the age of 12 and would rather play and talk than take on heavy responsibilities. They are purely innocent, but as time goes on, they all relish in the brutal killing of others, depicting their loss of innocence as chaos ensues. Piggy is the only one who is able to keep his logical reasoning away from savagery and therefore represents innocence. The audience notice that others recognize the importance of Piggy’s slow, thoughtful insight in the face of disaster because Ralph “wept for the end of innocence” (202) and he acknowledges Piggy as a “true wise friend” (202). Many times, people are only known for their surface appearance or quality, but in the right environment, their true personality and emotions/reactions (greed, selfishness, etc.) are seen exposed to others. As with the other boys, they became more animalistic while Piggy remained innocent with a pure heart, as Ralph described above claiming an “end of innocence, [a] darkness of man’s heart” (202). Golding illustrated that as innocence and hope was lost, evil and negativity began to set in. Human nature starts to fall apart when one loses hope or a positive mindset; positivity allows one to remain calm and properly think through a difficult situation. Sometimes, one needs to think with

While this can be good, it could also exclude some opinions, delaying the resolution to a problem. The boys constantly push Piggy’s opinions and ideas aside, even though they know he is right, because they interpret them to mean lacking fun or not going hunting for food or the beast. As children do, they would rather have fun than do any work to leave the island. Piggy’s traits, represented by the stolen broken glasses “From [Jack’s] left hand” (168), are needed by the others and all the boys know this, as Ralph claims that Piggy “had brains” (78) and that he “could recognize thought in another” (78). However, the boys’ disregard for Piggy’s ideas displays how the boys value their own opinions over one that is different, one that could help get them all off the island. Golding does this to tell the reader that it is in human nature to discriminate those who think differently than the majority or to ignore others who think “above” the rest. Piggy is constantly told that he’s “‘talking too much...Shut up’” (21) in order to silence another thought that contradicts the main idea most of the boys agree on. Since the boys silence Piggy, he must look to a higher power, such as Ralph to assist him in expressing his point of view whenever he insists that “‘[the boys] ought to shut up, oughtn’t they?’” (83). The only thing the boys ever wanted to do was to get off the island, but they