Lord of the Flies: We Hate Piggy

Lord of the Flies: We Hate 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... [continues]

Read full essay