Blog Entry #2 March. 11. 2007
Erika Domke

As we all have now read almost half the book we know that there are many symbols. As we briefly talked about in class almost every element of the book contains symbols, even the chapter titles. I would like to talk about pretty much the biggest symbol, for it is on the cover of the book, the pig! I believe the pig is not only a symbol but some sort of a foreshadow onto piggy the character. In chapter four we see the glorious capture of the pig. The killing was a gruesome one, where “the pigs head hung down with [a] gaping neck” (72). This picture shows the disgust and brutality of the hunt. We also now see the pig as a symbol. The fire is the most important thing in order to be rescued, but because of the hunt the fire went out with no one there to feed the flames. The pig shows that the boys are now becoming accustomed to the life that they are leading, and maybe becoming too involved for we see their enjoyment of this killing when they sang “kill the pig, cut her throat. Spill the blood.” (72). Also, it is becoming dangerous to some of the characters such as piggy. Piggy is not a boy like the others, he is bigger and not as agile, although this is unfortunate he does have the smarts, we see this when Ralph is thinking and wishes he could think like Piggy, “I can’t think. Not like Piggy.” (83). We see on page 68 that “Piggy was an outsider” and the fact that none of the boys like him and the way that jack treated him on page 75 when he “smacked his head”, Piggy may be in trouble in the future. I have come to suspect that the Pig and Piggy may have a common fate.