William Golding's Lord of the Flies: The Joy of Hating Piggy

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William Golding's Lord of the Flies: The Joy of Hating Piggy

In many novels there's usually a character the reader loves to hate.

Whether that character be a loser, a loner, or someone who's just chubby, we

all have made fun of that particular person at least once in our lives.

Throughout William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, he illustrates the joy

of readers in hating Piggy's character.

In the beginning of the novel, when Ralph meets Piggy after the plane

crash, Piggy regretfully tells Ralph what the kids used to call him at school, “

They used to call me ‘Piggy'.”(1) Ralph then shrieks with laughter and makes

fun of Piggy's nickname, “Piggy! Piggy!”(2) Ralph goes on and on with giving

Piggy a bad time, just as kids normally would. This could be Ralph's way of

trying to distract himself from the reality of the airplane smashup. By the

author's description of Piggy and the contents of Piggy's talks, all of us have

a good idea of how he looks like and how he acts. We can all relate to him as

that ‘fat nerd' that always sat alone in the cafeteria. We all had nicknames

for the ‘loner'. We knew deep down that this was a bad thing to do but we

enjoyed putting him or her down.

Piggy is smarter than most of the survivors. You could see this because

he was aware of the situation around him whereas Ralph enjoyed the freedom. It

was Piggy's idea to write down all of the survivors' names and he knew where to

put the hole in the conch and what it could be used for. Piggy is also clever

in which when he is asked to do something physical, whether it would be

exercise or hard labour, he says he cannot do it because of his asthma, but

most people could see that he is lying. An example of this is when he was

afraid to swim.

“Piggy tip-toed down the sandy side of the pool, and

sat there up to his neck in water smiling proudly at

Ralph.

‘ Aren't you going to swim? '

Piggy shook his head.

‘I can't swim. I wasn't allowed. My asthma----'

‘Sucks to your ass-mar!' ”(3)

Ralph could easily tell that Piggy was lying, and whimping out.

Piggy is different from the other survivors, he is considered as an

outsider. His body is different, he also thinks different from the other boys.

At first he is the only one talking about and wanting to get rescued, yet all

the other boys are either happy with their freedom and exploring the island or

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