illustrating the joy of readers in hating Piggy's character, in William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies

Essay by Anonymous UserHigh School, 11th grade October 1996

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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...