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Piggy The Outcast In Lord Of The Flies

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As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” People tend to think of geniuses as being haunted by anxiety, frustration, or likely suffering from depression. Sir William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies deals with the struggle of an intellectual individual who is filled with useful knowledge to help his peers but end up as an outcast and eventually murdered from the hatred of those he wants to help. Piggy is a great example of how those who are most intelligent in the society are treated unfairly base on their appearance and personality. Piggy is an outcast for many reasons, his health is one. Because he is overweight, short-sighted, and has asthma, no boy on the island takes him serious …show more content…

His tight grip on the civilized world represents him as the adult like figure in Golding’s novel, which sets him apart from the others since the beginning. As the other boys are embracing and celebrating the freedom the island brings, Piggy’s constant references to his auntie and the rules gives the impression of a “mama’s boy”. As he explain to Ralph why he is not running to find the others, “ My auntie told me not to run.”(Golding 9). The boys grow tired of his excuses and heavy dependency on adults who are not even there. Piggy does not know how to act without adults acting as a safety net around him to protect him, and the boys understand that so they further exploit him due to the fact that he is the weakest and easiest to pick on, which makes him extremely …show more content…

Piggy came onto the island exactly the same way all the other boys did, through a plane crash, besides personal appearance and personality, nothing makes him different from the other boys. He is persecuted for being overweight, something that someone at his age cannot necessarily change, and because he is intelligent and his ideas are quite mature, it separates him from the others and made him a target to Jack that leads up to his murder. It is depressing to see that this is true in society, that people are judged based on appearance or personality, but in the end there is no one to blame since virtually everyone is guilty of passing judgement on others. Sadly, this is a challenge that is unlikely to be changed anytime

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In addition, Piggy was not just dehumanized for getting called very fat, he was also dehumanized by getting Physically abused. It was easier for the boys to abuse someone and use him as a punching bag physically when he wasn’t even thought of as a human.. When Piggy said something that Jack didn’t agree with he got smacked. “Ralph made a step forward and Jack smacked Piggy’s head. Piggy’s glasses flew off and tinkled on the rocks Piggy cried out in terror” (Golding 71).

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(Golding 2). Piggy shows he is scared that they are stuck on the island on their own with no adults. You can tell Piggy is scared by the tone of his voice when he replied to Ralph. Thus, showing that Piggy wasn’t the bravest out of all the other boys. Here 's an example of Piggy’s character transforming.

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Piggy is always talking about him aunt bringing in a female opinion on an island full of boys, by doing this it makes him more mature. “ “I'm scared of him” said Piggy “ and that's why i know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's alright really an’ then when you see him again; it's like asthma an’ you can't breathe. I tell you what.

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Piggy is fat, brilliant, lacking in social graces, and wears glasses, in other words the outsider on this island. Due to Piggy being such an foreigner, Jack feels that he is above Piggy, and feels better when he causes Piggy pain and sorrow. For example, “‘You’re talking too much,’ said Jack Merridew. ‘Shut up Fatty,’” (21). In this scene you can see power in Piggy’s lack thereof.

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Throughout the book, Piggy, an intellectual boy with poor eyesight and asthma, is shown to be an insightful collaborator because he is perceptive, intelligent, and conscientious. To begin,

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William Golding’s fictional, British novel, Lord of the Flies, presents a character that serves a two-part function as a “scapegoat” and a certain commentary on life. During WWII, a group of British boys are being evacuated via plane when they crash and are stranded on an island without adults. As time progresses, the innate evilness of human nature begins to overcome the savage society of young boys while Piggy, an individual representation of brains without brawn, becomes an outlier as he tries to resist this gradual descent of civilness and ends up shouldering the blame for the wrongdoings of the savage tribe. Up until his untimely death, Piggy is portrayed as the most intellectual and most civil character in the group of stranded boys. Right from the beginning, Piggy realized that “[they] got to do something,” (8) and he recognized the shell Ralph had picked up as a conch.

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406 Words | 2 Pages

Piggy's overweight physique and glasses easily present him as an outcast to the other boys. His appearance made him an easy punchline for their cruel jokes. Piggy confides in Ralph hoping that the island will be a fresh start away from school bullies.

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1062 Words | 5 Pages

After a quick vote, Ralph was elected leader of the stranded boys, leaving Jack jealous and vengeful. Golding expresses in the novel how people can be made powerless and put in danger due to their self image. As a way to express this, Golding uses the character, Piggy, to give the audience a sense of what it feels like to have problems and conditions that create a separation between people. Piggy is a character with more of a sensible appeal to the problems that arise in this novel, but he is dramatically weakened after being caught time and time again envying Jack and Ralph. Piggy is described as a "fatly naked" (13) boy as he and Ralph are first scoping out and entering the pool, whereas when Piggy was exiting

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1217 Words | 5 Pages

As stated before, Piggy is clearly the heaviest of the boys, and more than once, Jack called Piggy “Fatty”(21). In this way, Piggy almost immediately loses power and respect. You can see this when Ralph tells Jack Piggy’s name, but more so in Piggy’s reaction after the fact. Piggy ended up confronting Ralph about how he didn’t want to be called Piggy, but Ralph blatantly disobeyed and told everyone that Piggy is what he was called. In Ralph’s defense, he is “Better Piggy than Fatty” (25).

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All throughout the book Piggy is faced with many challenges where most people would act in a bad manner, although Piggy is always responding very appropriately and does not act wrongly against the other. All these examples show how Piggy

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1498 Words | 6 Pages

It’s also important in his characterization by showing that he is one of the more clear-minded characters that realizes how important adult supervision is. Piggy is already uneasy about the whole plane crash on an island situation, in this feeling of insecurity, that he is already being abandoned by Ralph, forces him to want to feel safe and content. His auntie is the person that makes him feel safe because prior to the war he lived with her and she kept him safe and on the right path by instituting rules and directing him with phrases he can easily remember. This theme is also shown soon after they had discovered that there were no grownups and also after Ralph and Piggy’s initial interaction when Ralph was swimming and Piggy was waiting patiently on the shore. Piggy asks Ralph where he learned to swim and Ralph responds with, “‘I could swim when I was five.

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428 Words | 2 Pages

Piggy influences the novel in several ways. Although he was not much of a leader, his virtue benefits the boys. He is intelligent and mature, therefore he was able to indicate the true nature of humanity and the evil that is inside each of

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At the beginning of the story, Golding introduces a boy named Piggy, a fat, intelligent boy, who feels shy about himself and loses his self-confidence through the story. The other boys at the island start bullying him, especially verbally by calling him a fat, useless boy in the group. We can understand Piggy’s feeling when in a community with a democracy, he is scared of bully boys, especially Jack, and refuses to talk; “ Piggy opened his mouth to speak, caught Jack’s eye and shut it ...” narrator says (Golding, 42). This shows

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835 Words | 4 Pages

On the island, the boys are continually arguing, especially when a rift occurs between the group of boys. One example of Piggy’s effort to resolve the problems boys have is when Ralph goes to Castle Rock to confront Jack. Piggy helps Ralph by repeating, “‘Ralph remember what we came for. The fire. My specs.’

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424 Words | 2 Pages

Coming to the island the children have their innocence intact and act like kids. For instance, when just getting introduced to a character named Piggy it is said, “Twelve years and a few months, to have lost the prominent tummy of childhood and not yet old enough for adolescence to have made him awkward”(Golding 10). The quote actively demonstrates that Piggy is still very young has not matured yet and is just an innocent kid. Furthermore, Ralph talks

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