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Piggy The Outcast In Lord Of The Flies

734 Words3 Pages

As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” People tend to think of geniuses as being haunted by anxiety, frustration, or likely suffering from depression. Sir William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies deals with the struggle of an intellectual individual who is filled with useful knowledge to help his peers but end up as an outcast and eventually murdered from the hatred of those he wants to help. Piggy is a great example of how those who are most intelligent in the society are treated unfairly base on their appearance and personality. Piggy is an outcast for many reasons, his health is one. Because he is overweight, short-sighted, and has asthma, no boy on the island takes him serious …show more content…

His tight grip on the civilized world represents him as the adult like figure in Golding’s novel, which sets him apart from the others since the beginning. As the other boys are embracing and celebrating the freedom the island brings, Piggy’s constant references to his auntie and the rules gives the impression of a “mama’s boy”. As he explain to Ralph why he is not running to find the others, “ My auntie told me not to run.”(Golding 9). The boys grow tired of his excuses and heavy dependency on adults who are not even there. Piggy does not know how to act without adults acting as a safety net around him to protect him, and the boys understand that so they further exploit him due to the fact that he is the weakest and easiest to pick on, which makes him extremely …show more content…

Piggy came onto the island exactly the same way all the other boys did, through a plane crash, besides personal appearance and personality, nothing makes him different from the other boys. He is persecuted for being overweight, something that someone at his age cannot necessarily change, and because he is intelligent and his ideas are quite mature, it separates him from the others and made him a target to Jack that leads up to his murder. It is depressing to see that this is true in society, that people are judged based on appearance or personality, but in the end there is no one to blame since virtually everyone is guilty of passing judgement on others. Sadly, this is a challenge that is unlikely to be changed anytime

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