Piggy is described by Golding as ‘short’ and very ‘fat’. This has earned him the nickname ‘Piggy’ in his previous school. It’s no coincidence that his nickname is such, it relates to the overwhelming emotion Jack and his hunters feel when they feel the urge to ‘kill the pig’. This indirect metaphor suggesting that the boys are killing a part of Piggy each time and that their aggression might be directed at him. In fact, while Jack and his gang continue to kill more pigs, the logic and reason which Piggy symbolizes progressively diminishes with the pigs. His appearance alone has made him an outsider, because the other boys look down on him. It is his academic background and his isolation from the savage boys that had allowed him to remain mostly unchanged from his primitive experiences on the island. Golding uses him as the ‘control’ character that can contrast the other characters as they become more and more savage. Piggy depicts different effects on certain individuals on the island. Ralph has a fair nature as he is willing to listen to Piggy. He becomes increasingly dependent on Piggy's wisdom and becomes lost in the confusion around him.
Piggy is made an outcast by his undesirable physique and superior intelligence. This isolation and wisdom also helped Piggy to retain his civilized behaviour. As well, he was made painfully more aware of the great amount of injustice in the world. From the characters, it could be seen that under the same circumstances, different individuals can develop in different ways depending on the factors within themselves and how they interacted with each other. Their personalities and what they knew could determine how they would interpret and adapt to a new environment such as the tropical island. Not everyone has so much evil hidden inside them as to become complete savages when released from the boundaries of our society.
‘Piggy! Piggy!’, ‘Ralph, please’; Piggy, here is almost begging Ralph to stop, he hates getting mocked and it upsets him a lot, he wants to fit in but also realises the need for order and these views cause the other boys to dislike him as he seems to them as an adult in their own ‘world’. They don’t want to live with rules; they want to have fun; but Piggy, as the most intelligent of the characters, views the rules as tools of survival. He views all of the boy’s behaviour on the island in terms of whether it will contribute to their rescue. He knows the reaction he will get from the boys when he tries to put in some sort of order, but still he tries; he really just wants to help. Piggy remains an outsider to the boys throughout the story, he is set up as a somebody trying his hardest to fit in but never actually fitting in. This is mainly due to his concerns and ideas. ‘How can you expect to be rescued when you don’t put first things first and act proper?’ When Piggy suggests that the boys build a sundial they mock him. This is quite hurtful to Piggy as he doesn’t seem to understand why they hate him so much and he still tries to win their approval by saying to them what he thinks are good and bad ideas. In this sense he is a hero; no matter what they say or do he always tries, for example, when he tries to get his glasses back. This is out of character for Piggy but he tries. Regrettably what he does, it seems self centred, he says and suggests things in order to impress and gain approval from the other boys, the main thing of all he says seems to be to show his intelligence to the boys, but instead, rather than impressing this serves as an irritation to the boys.
Jack is very weak on the island he can’t cope with order he hates it because he likes every think to be chaotic. He also loves power he said “I ought to be chief he said with simple arrogance”. When Jack singles out Piggy it makes him feel good about himself it makes him feel powerful he only picks on him because he is different and can not stick up for himself. Jack knows that he is an easy target. The first sign of violence in the book is when Jack fights with Piggy and breaks one of the lenses on Piggy's glasses. The broken lens depicts the fact that the people on the island are gradually degrading in morals and allowing their malicious sides break through. The glasses symbolize the voice of reason and logic among the boys. He defends his glasses even more than the conch. Piggy, who represents the boys’ (and societies) collective personality, uses his glasses to find solutions to the boys’ problems. The most important solution the glasses find is the lighting of the fire, the boys’ best chance of being rescued. Piggy’s glasses are an important symbol in the novel. He is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses represent the power of intellect in society. This symbolic importance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire, “His specs-use them as burning glasses!” Also the glasses are very important to Piggy as an individual, as without them he is as good as blind. But the glasses have been use to light signal fires and cooking fires. Golding uses this to show that tools from society can be used for good and evil: as one of the fires may have killed the little’un.
Piggy represents the law and order of the adult world. “Grown-ups know things.” He is the part of man’s personality which attempts to act according to an absolute set of standards. Throughout the novel, he attempts to condition the island society to mirror the society they all lived in England. “The first thing we should have made was shelters down there by the beach...”. “When‘ll your dad rescue us?” He tries to pull Ralph towards reason and logic. Throughout the novel, Piggy is often the one who comes up with ideas for Ralph to act out, though he lacks any social skills and has trouble communicating or fitting in.
Piggy is like an observer learning from the actions of others. His status in their society allows him to look at the boys from an outsider's perspective. “You are acting like a crowd of kids.” He could learn of the hatred being brought out of the boys without having to experience the thirst for blood that Ralph was exposed to. Although he is easily intimidated by the other boys, especially by Jack, he does not lack the self-confidence to protest or speak out against the indignities from the boys in the latter parts of the novel. “Which is better – to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?” Again Golding uses Piggy as a voice representing civilization, law and order, speaking out for its rules. Piggy’s hair never ‘seems to grow’. This suggests that he is not vulnerable to the progression of savagery the other boys seem to be drawn towards. Golding’s descriptions of his baldness also presented an image of old age (wisdom) and made Piggy seem to lack the strength of youth (his asthma). It also links to time. “I’ve been thinking…about a clock. …We could have a sundial each. Then we should know what the time was. “Piggy is the only link to civilisation after the other boys forgets the rules. Piggy is the character who seems to change the least in the story.
I feel Piggy is an important character in the novel as he is the only one with the brains and he is the only one except Ralph that thinks about been rescued and about the future. I believe that it is Piggy’s intelligence that helps them to survive but when Piggy died and the conch smashed the symbol for intelligence, order and logic died with him. So therefore Piggy is an important figure in the novel as he helps the natural leader Ralph, who makes the vital decisions.
