What Is Piggy Symbolize In Lord Of The Flies

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The fact that Piggy is in trouble in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies is clear as soon as the plane crashes. The first voice heard in the book is Piggy’s saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”(p.1) He is fat, uncoordinated, and already cannot keep up with Ralph as they climb over the rocks at the lagoon. Piggy’s character is highly symbolic, which his nickname implies. As the novel unfolds, he becomes the weak character, which leads to the other boys killing him. He has that animal name. But the symbolism is more complicated than that: In many ways Piggy symbolizes civilization, and his death is its death. As the story unfolds and the boys become less and less civilized, and Piggy becomes more and more their opposite; the growing difference is part of the point of the story. When he is intelligent, they are not. And where they are strong, he is not. Finally, where they are the hunters, he is the prey. At his death the conch shatters, and chaos rules. Civilization has been killed. In the first way they stand as opposites, He is intelligent and the other boys are stubborn. An example of this is when Piggy tells Ralph how to blow the conch …show more content…
As time goes on, they shed their clothes; Piggy becomes so different that they end up killing him. The difference is illustrated by their descriptions in the scene before Piggy dies. Roger is a hunter in war paint up on a cliff and “below him, Ralph was a shock of hair and Piggy a bag of fat.” (p. 180) Ralph and Piggy have less than human form to the hunters. Piggy is trying to tell them to have rules and agree to do things the “right” way, but they ignore him and throw rocks. This fight is between good and evil, and the author has used the boys’ development and the polarization with the weak kids, like Piggy, over the course of the novel to show how bad human nature can
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