Research; Character profile: Piggy

Piggy

• He has physical disadvantages because he is fat and asthmatic and is short sighted. Without his glasses, everything becomes a blur.
• He is very intelligent - in Chapter 1 it is his idea to make a list of names, and it is he who realises that no adult knows the boys are on the island. Later he suggests making a sundial and hats. "What intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy." Ralph recognises Piggy could think: "Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains."
• However, he does not speak as grammatically accurately as the others:" How can you expect to be rescues if you don't put first things first and act proper". Perhaps this is to suggest he wasn't as well educated as the others and that he is not from the right class of people to be a successful leader. At the time the novel was written most power was still in the hands of the middle and upper classes. "Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination to manual labour."
• He is embarrassed by his nickname, and he behaves with dignity when Ralph betrays the name to the others. We never know his real name.
• He is kind and considerate to the littluns. He helps the boy with the birthmark talk about the 'snake-thing' and helps Percival talk about the beast. He is later often left to care for them when the others are exploring and hunting.
• He has the most mature attitude of any boy on the island. He scornfully sees the other boys "Acting like a crowd of kids".
• He is pragmatic. When Simon dies, Piggy tries to convince Ralph there was nothing they could have done: "It was an accident... and that's that".
• Like Ralph, he believes in civilised values and clings to what creates order: " I just take the conch to say this. I can't see no more and I got to get my glasses back". When they go to the fort to confront Jack, he shouts "I got the conch!" to try to show Jack that he has a right to be heard.
• Piggy and the conch are destroyed together by the rock Roger levers. Thus both intelligence and the symbol of authority are dead, so we know that there is nothing left to stop Jack gaining full control.
• At the end, Ralph mourns the fall through the air of "the true, wise friend called Piggy".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/proselordflies/2prose_lord_flies_charrev4.shtml