The Metacognitive Reader
While the majority of the boys seem to simply enjoy causing Piggy pain, Jack finds his ability to gain power over Piggy as rewarding and uses it to influence the rest of the group. In this section I will discuss the reasons why I felt sympathy towards Piggy throughout the book.
Right off the bat, Golding puts the reader into an intense situation. A group of young schoolboys, just at the start of the Second World War, were flying over the ocean when the plane crashes down on an island, stranding them. With no adults to supervise them, the reader watches as what part of civilization these young boys have left disappears and turns into terror. The boys, becoming savages. However two leaders emerge as order collapses: Ralph, focused on leaving the island, and Jack, who's focused on surviving. Along with Ralph and Jack, one other leader emerges, Piggy. Piggy has both the knowledge of how to survive and leave the island, however he lacks the ability to influence others. So placed within absolute chaos, Golding forces the reader to hold sympathy for the boys and most importantly, Piggy. As a teenager, every moment of Golding's novel becomes a frightening reality for me. Most of all, I could easily relate myself to Piggy. In which, we both wear glasses, we both know what needs to happen, but we both lack the skill to influence a group of people. Throughout the novel, Piggy is only close to a few people, the boys bully him in many different ways, and overall, he is used and then discarded. In order to constantly remind the reader that the boys are only children, even though their actions show otherwise, Golding writes the boys voices accurately. He uses words such as "Creepers" (vines), "Ass-mar" (asthma), and common mocking between the boys to portray their childish characters. Throughout the novel, Piggy is bullied through continuous verbal mocking, physical abuse, and exclusion from the rules of their society. First, although Ralph is the only boy who treats Piggy fairly on the island, when they originally meet Piggy explains that he used to be called ‘Piggy.’ Golding writes, “Ralph shrieked with laughter” (p. 11). This shows that even Ralph found that calling him ‘Piggy’ was funny. Despite the fact that Piggy told Ralph, “I don’t care what they call me…so long as they don’t call me what they used to call me at school” (p. 11), Ralph still betrays Piggy by telling the other boys to call him ‘Piggy’. As seen on page 21, Jack yells “Shut up, Fatty.” Ralph responds with “He’s not Fatty…his real name’s Piggy!” Ralph tries to somewhat redeem himself by explaining to Piggy that being called ‘Piggy’ is better than being called ‘Fatty.’ Secondly, Jack resorts to the physical abuse of Piggy to take out his frustrations. For instance, Golding writes, “This from Piggy, and the wails of agreement from some of the other hunters drove Jack to violence. The bolting look came into his blue eyes. He took a step, and able at last to hit someone, stuck his fist into Piggy’s stomach” (p. 71). Finally, at the beginning of the novel, Ralph and Jack establish that rules are a necessity while they are on the island. The first rule created was using the conch to signify one’s right to speak: “I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he’s speaking… And he won’t be interrupted. Except by me (Ralph)” (p. 33). Later on in the novel, every time Piggy holds the conch and tries to speak, the group shouts and tells him to “shut up”. This repeatedly occurs throughout the novel showing that most of the boys do not give Piggy the same rights as the others. The verbal and physical abuse that Piggy must deal with, in addition to the lack of equality in his treatment contributes to my sympathy towards him. Personally, I believe that everyone deserves equal rights, and should never be intentionally emotionally or physically harmed. Watching Piggy suffer throughout the novel touched me personally and made me feel sympathy for Piggy, because he was just trying to help. Quite quickly into The Lord of the Flies,the literary merit of the novel was quite prevalent. I believe that the novel has such high literary merit is because Golding successfully showed the frightening idea of man returning to a primitive state in only a short time, something that took us thousands of years to grow from. Personally this idea of returning to our primitive selves is both frightening and difficult to portray, especially since, as Golding showed, it only takes a few days to return to. |
Author William Golding was born September 19, 1911 and wrote his most famous novel, The Lord of the Flies, in 1954. The book was initially declined by 21 publishers before being published.
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Questions to Consider
- What inspired Golding to portray the return to primitiveness?
- Why did Golding use schoolboys?
- Why did Golding want to portray three different leaders?
- Why did Ralph disregard what Piggy said?
- Was Golding metaphorically attacking the world leaders? Consider he was born just before the end of World War One and the book was written just after World War Two.