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Significance of piggy in lord of the flies
Literary symbols of lord of the flies
Significance the symbols in the novel lord of the flies
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The True Nature of Humans is Revealed in the Cruelest Ways Piggy is ugly without sense, unwanted, and ridiculed by his island-mates throughout the entire novel. He is seen as the biggest outcast on the island, but he goes through a journey of self-discovery that differs from the other boy's journeys. Piggy is in search for acceptance, and just wants to fit in with the rest of the boys. The others just want fire, food, water, blood, or rescue, while Piggy just wants some friends. Most of the boys go through a physical transformation or go down a darker path, but I believe piggy goes through a deeper transformation while searching for what he wants.
Instead of responding to Piggy’s arguments, the savages use violence and noise to drown out any opposition with no real reasoning to back them up. The main theme emphasized in Lord of the Flies is that humans are by nature corrupt and evil. This passage embraces that theme because the savages make immoral decisions to gain power and silence the voices projecting against them. It is a turning point in the book where the darkness in the boys’ hearts wins over their compassion and empathy. The real struggle for power is over and hatred has proved to be stronger than kindness and
Lord of the flies: From Civility to Savagery Chaos out ways all order in a time of panic. When the plane crashes on the island, the group of boys has no one to turn to for a sense of direction, all they have is themselves. Piggy, one of the main characters, has asthma and is the most out-of-shape out of all of the boys, hence the nickname Piggy. He also represents order and innocence in the group. He also is represented as the "adult" of the group, because he is the most mature out of all of them.
Piggy is very intelligent, he comes up with ideas on how to help the boys survive on the island from the moment they crashed on it. Ralph starts begins to admire him for this clear focus on their rescue off the island. “ we can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when they hear us” (Pg 16)
Eventually, the Pig’s head, calling itself ‘Lord of the Flies”, starts listing names, names like “Jack and Roger and Maurice and Robert and Bill and Piggy and Ralph. Do you. See?” (Golding 144). In this scene, the Lord of the Flies is threatening Simon, implying that the boys will eventually kill him, even Piggy and Ralph, because they want to have “fun” on this island.
Piggy is a boy who is picked on as soon as he gets on the island. His weight makes him an easy target, and his lack of contribution to the group frustrates many of the boys. For the most part, he was protected by Ralph, the leader of the island. However, he becomes a casualty when Jack takes control of the island. After taking over, Jack and Ralph fight while Piggy stands off to the side, blind as a bat due to Jack stealing his glasses.
(Golding 181). These words were spoken by Jack right after the death of Piggy, and it shows that he didn’t care about Piggy’s life, he only cared about having power and living prosperously in his own ideals. Overall the Lord of the Flies is a novel that shows the savagery inside every person regardless of how civilized they seem to be. Whether people want to believe it or not they are selfish and are evil on the inside which is told by the Lord of the Flies in the book. This is truly shown by the conch and its ability to create meetings, give people the ability to speak, and the destruction of the
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.
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.
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
In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the Lord of the Flies signifies the power of evil and violence within people. When Simon imagines the pig’s head speaking to him, the pig’s head implies, “I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are? ” (143). The Lord of the Flies symbolizes chaos and corruption that’s caused by the boys on the island.
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.
Lord of the Flies remains Golding’s most accredited piece of work. It is an apparently simple but densely layered novel that has been categorized as fiction, fable, a myth, and a tale. Generous use of symbolism in Golding’s work is what distinguishes him with other authors of the same genre. For example, the conch shell, that represents a vulnerable hold of authority which was finally shattered to pieces with Piggy’s death. Secondly, for the other boys, Piggy’s eyeglasses represented the lack of intelligence which was later defeated by superstition and savagery.
Piggy is very central to the theme development in Lord of the Flies. He represents the idea of law and order, reason and logic. Piggy represents the useful aspect of civilization, an attitude that becomes gradually smaller and finally is silenced through the forces of authority and control. Piggy turn into a social outcast from the pressure of society in which being logical is considered unimportant. William Golding shows that reasoning is not valued in the society and that evil controls us.
In The Lord of the Flies, Piggy changes tremendously from the start to end of the novel. When the boys first arrive on the island, he is a very shy boy, often having Ralph convey his thoughts and ideas for him in fear of mockery. However, the boys still mock him as time goes on because they only recognize his character, not his ideas. Piggy realizes this fact and starts to break away from his previous character, just speaking his mind freely. As a result, he stands up for himself and is not so timid, as seen when the other boys break away and form their own tribe.
