Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Pigman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Death and Grief
Personal Responsibility
Family
Loneliness
Compassion
Summary
Analysis
Lorraine narrates this chapter. Back home, Lorraine’s mother grumbles about a female patient she wishes would just die already, since the woman’s husband has been behaving inappropriately toward Lorraine’s mother. Lorraine walks into the bedroom and starts cleaning up, hoping it will get her mother to stop talking. She wonders how her mother would treat Mr. Pignati if he were her patient. Desperate to escape her mother’s grumbling, Lorraine tells her she has to go to school now. Before Lorraine can leave, her mother assesses Lorraine’s skirt, criticizing its shortness. She says that Lorraine doesn’t have to think about sex all the time just because all the other girls are.
Lorraine’s mother’s lack of compassion for her dying patients really hits home for Lorraine in a way it hasn’t before now that Mr. Pignati is sick, and Lorraine is faced with the possibility that Mr. Pignati, like her mother’s patients, could die. Another negative thing Lorraine’s mother does here is project her own unease about sexuality (a consequence of her late husband’s infidelity) onto her daughter, who hasn’t done anything wrong. The novel doesn’t state this, but it’s possible that Lorraine’s mother’s criticism is the reason that Lorraine is uncomfortable exploring her own sexuality, as demonstrated in the previous chapter with her and John’s uneasy kiss.
Themes
At school that day, Lorraine doesn’t meet up with John until third-period lunch. Lorraine notices that he looks sharper than usual, and she can tell he’s still thrilled about having Mr. Pignati’s house to themselves. During lunch, John drags Lorraine to a school pay phone and calls up Mr. Pignati at St. Ambrose Hospital. John hands the phone to Lorraine so he can keep watch—students aren’t allowed to use the public phone. Eventually, a nurse picks up. She tells Lorraine that the earliest Mr. Pignati would be released would be Saturday. Lorraine hangs up the phone and passes along this information to John.
This passage further demonstrates the selfishness that continues to affect John’s behavior despite his growing maturity. That he’s dressing nicer than usual—presumably trying to look good around Lorraine after the romantic scene they shared in the previous chapter—suggests that his motive for accepting Mr. Pignati’s keys was mostly selfish. He seems more interested in having a space to engage in future intimacy with Lorraine than, for instance, looking after Mr. Pignati’s space while he recovers at the hospital.
Themes
John and Lorraine try to replicate their lovely Monday night—the night that was, to Lorraine, “the first time [she] was glad to be alive,” though she knows that she and John looked decidedly silly in their respective costumes. But on Tuesday, Lorraine burns the TV dinners. And on Wednesday, she’s too busy with chores to leave the house. On Thursday, John and Lorraine have to write a report for Problems in American Democracy and don’t have time to go to Mr. Pignati’s house.
Lorraine’s describing Monday night as “the first time [she] was glad to be alive” reflects her happiness at her and John’s shared kiss. That this happy moment happened while she and John were wearing the Pignatis’ clothes symbolizes the positive effect Mr. Pignati has had on Lorraine’s life. Being in his company makes her feel happy, safe, and accepted. Meanwhile, being at her mother’s house, where she is constantly criticized and punished, does just the opposite.
Themes
That Friday—the day before Mr. Pignati is supposed to come home—John and Lorraine cut class and head over to Mr. Pignati’s house first thing in the morning. Lorraine makes breakfast, making John the “scrambled eggs with Sloppy-Joe sauce” that he requests. She burns the toast, which John complains about. When she offers to make more, he complains that it'll take too long. Then he claims that Lorraine messed up the instant coffee, though it’s virtually impossible to mess up instant coffee. After breakfast, Lorraine asks John to take out the garbage, but he refuses: “Why should I put out the garbage when you’re the one who makes it?”
This is another aspect of the book that hasn’t aged well. Though the book clearly means to portray John’s ungratefulness in a negative light, it doesn’t overtly challenge the assumption that Lorraine, as the female half of their partnership, is better suited to domestic tasks like cooking and cleaning. That being said, the book has already established that John acts out to cope with difficult feelings he doesn’t know how to handle. Knowing this, readers can interpret the disrespect he shows Lorraine as a misdirected stress response to his worry for Mr. Pignati.
Themes
Get the entire The Pigman LitChart as a printable PDF.
After breakfast, Lorraine wants to straighten up the house for Mr. Pignati’s arrival. But John refuses to wash even his own dishes. John’s horrid behavior makes Lorraine starts to empathize with John’s mother. If Lorraine didn’t know how “maladjusted” John can be, she’d have left straight away and never associated with him again—but instead, she lets him glower and watch TV.
A generous reading of John’s horrible behavior is that he’s overwhelmed and immobilized with fear that Mr. Pignati might die, or perhaps he’s scared about how he should act around Lorraine following their kiss. On the other hand, a less generous reading is that he simply (and selfishly) doesn’t want to help Lorraine do chores. Lorraine’s attributing John’s poor behavior to him being “maladjusted” is admirably compassionate, perhaps to a fault—regardless of whatever inner turmoil John is dealing with, he’s also being self-absorbed and a bad, unsupportive friend.
Themes
Lorraine thinks that John’s bad mood has been brewing ever since they first kissed; they’ve both been awkward around each other ever since that fateful evening. She thinks that maybe John has begun to think about their changing relationship. Lorraine, meanwhile, knows she’s loved John for months. And though John initially seemed to consider her nothing more than a friend, Lorraine has noticed that he’s started wearing shaving lotion and dressing nicer. Sometime later, John finally appears in the doorway and tells Lorraine that he’ll take the garbage out—but only because Mr. Pignati will be back tomorrow.
It's unclear why Lorraine has any interest in this relationship—John repeatedly invalidates her emotions and manipulates her to get his way. But regardless of whether the reader finds Lorraine’s love for John healthy or even believable, her emotions reaffirm the desirability of companionship, especially to alleviate one’s loneliness. When John finally (albeit sulkily) offers to take the garbage out, it shows that he's gradually recognizing how immature he’s been and is trying to find better, more responsible methods of working through difficult emotions.
Themes
After that, John and Lorraine dive into cleaning, not stopping until the place is spotless. The only room they don’t touch is the room with all the pigs in it—Lorraine sees that room as “almost religious.” She thinks it contains Mr. Pignati’s “spirit.”
This passage shows the respect and care the teens have for Mr. Pignati. They know how important his pig collection is to him, and so they leave the room in order to protect the pigs Mr. Pignati holds so dear.
Themes
Later that day, Lorraine has a nightmare about the room. In the dream, she walks down a long hall and sees curtains hanging from the doorway at the end of the hall. The pig room is dark, but Lorraine can discern the outlines of pigs before her. But the pigs aren’t sitting on the table like they usually are—instead, they’re arranged around a long, dark object. Lorraine feels a force overcome her, moving her fingers toward the long, dark object. She knows she’s about to open it—the coffin. It’s at that point that she wakes up screaming. In retrospect, Lorraine decides, it should have been obvious to her that “the dream was an omen of death.”
Lorraine’s bad dream further develops the pig symbolism while building intrigue. At this point, readers know that Mr. Pignati will die, but they don’t know how. In placing what is presumably Mr. Pignati’s coffin near the pigs, Lorraine’s dream suggests that the pigs will have something to do with his death. In addition, the fact that Lorraine has a nightmare about death in the first place shows that she is anxious about death but lacks the knowledge and support to work through that anxiety in her waking life.
Themes
John calls out to Lorraine from the kitchen. Lorraine heads to the kitchen and sees lots of beers arranged on the kitchen table. John tells her they’re going to have a party tonight—just a few people. Lorraine thinks the idea is unhinged, but John smiles at her and tells her it's what Mr. Pignati would want.
Immediately after (sort of) redeeming himself by taking the garbage out, John reverts to his selfish and inconsiderate ways. It’s doubtful that John really thinks Mr. Pignati would want them to throw a party at his house—it’s more likely that he wants to have a party himself, knows it’s probably selfish of him to do this, and so develops this ridiculous argument to alleviate his guilt and justify his unwise actions.
Themes
