Piggy Flashcards
What does Piggy represent?
Rationality and science
“his knees were plump”
“He was shorter than the fair boy and very fat”
“looked up through thick spectacles”
- Stand out in stark contrast to athletically built Ralph
- Golding starts novel with these two
“Ass-mar”
“What’s grown-ups going to think”
- Other boys mock Piggy for speaking in non-standard English
- Judged on class
“He was intimidated by this uniformed superiority and the offhand authority in Merridew’s voice”
- Sees himself as inferior
- Piggy is not confident
- Piggy is derided
“I expect we’ll want to know their names…We ought to have a meeting” (ch 1)
Shows Piggy’s intelligence and rationality
“This is an island. Nobody don’t know we’re here.” (ch 1)
Piggy quickly grasps the reality of the situation
“What intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy” (ch 1)
Even narrator aware of Piggy’s intelligence
“Piggy discounted all this learnedly as a ‘mirage’” (ch 4)
Reference to the sea blending into the sky at midday
“I’ve been thinking’, he said,’about a clock. We could make a sundial.” (ch 4)
Innovative
“I know about people. I know about me. And him. He can’t hurt you: but if you stand out of the way he’d hurt the next thing. And that’s me.” (ch 5)
Intelligent and an astute judge of character
“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What’s grown-ups going to think?”
Trust in adults
Fails to realise that the grown-ups of the outer world are engaged in a savage war
“He was gesticulating, searching for a formula.” (ch 10)
- Scientific approach to life doesn’t always work
- Tries to make anything fit his rational approach
- Approach as flawed as Ralph’s
“I thought they wanted the conch” (ch 10)
- Piggy regularly gets things wrong because of his rational approach
- Humans don’t always behave rationally
