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
John narrates this chapter. He barks at the attendant to call an ambulance. Then John tells Lorraine she’d better leave, knowing Lorraine’s mother will be furious if she knows Lorraine met up with Mr. Pignati that day. Lorraine starts to cry and runs out of the primate house. After a while, it’s just John there, kneeling beside Mr. Pignati. The monkeys stop shrieking, and the monkey house is suddenly silent. John doesn’t feel a pulse in Mr. Pignati’s wrist.
John’s development from self-absorbed and unempathetic to thoughtful and compassionate really comes through in his choice to deal with the first responders to protect Lorraine. It shows that he now recognizes the importance of sometimes doing unpleasant things to help the people one cares about.
Themes
John remembers when he asked Lorraine about Mr. Pignati earlier that day, and Lorraine said, “What do you care?” John realizes he does care about Mr. Pignati. Lorraine thinks she knows everything about John. But she doesn’t. He wonders what Lorraine wants from him—to tell her everything that matters to him? That he feels lonely and friendless too? That it pains him to live in a world where you can grow old and only have a baboon for company?
Not only is John more compassionate than he was at the start of the story, but he’s more introspective now, too. Before, he would resort to self-destructive behaviors like drinking and smoking to avoid dealing with his loneliness, but now he’s more comfortable with acknowledging the inner hardships that plague him.
Themes
John wonders if he and Lorraine are themselves just “big blabbing baboons—smiling away and not really caring what was going on as long as there were enough peanuts bouncing around.” Suddenly, the monkey house’s tile floor feels cold against John’s knees. He stands and looks down at Mr. Pignati’s corpse. In that moment, the old man’s head looks a little like Bore’s, which bothers John.
John’s observation that he and Lorraine are “big blabbing baboons” suggests that the teens are selfish, mostly caring about things that affect them personally and perhaps not caring as much about problems that affect others. When John thinks that Mr. Pignati’s head looks like Bore’s, it shows that he’s finally realizing that his parents will die—and that he’s not ready for that to happen.
Themes
John lights a cigarette and watches the smoke float up to the ceiling. He wonders if Lorraine is outside waiting for him. He feels like he’s in Lorraine’s nightmare, the one about the room with the black curtains. He thinks about the fact that he, too, will end up in a coffin someday. Then he hears Lorraine’s voice inside his head, scolding him for smoking cigarettes. He wonders if he’d rather die than grow up into one of the adults he hates—the adults who think he’s disturbed just because he thinks about serious things like “God and death and the Universe and Love.”
While John is more introspective than he was at the beginning of the story, it’s still difficult for him to acknowledge the tough issues that plague him, like Mr. Pignati’s death and his and Lorraine’s betrayal of Mr. Pignati. Still, when John explains here that what he hates most about adults is that they don’t want to talk about serious issues, it shows that he’s learned that keeping these things bottled up inside isn’t a solution. Adults might think John is disturbed for thinking about serious things, but what’s actually disturbed, John implies here, is thinking that ignoring one’s hardships will make them go away.
Themes
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John stays in the monkey house until the ambulance arrives and announces Mr. Pignati’s death. Then he says goodbye and walks outside, finding Lorraine sitting on a nearby bench. When she sees John, she screams that they “murdered him.” John doesn’t respond. Instead, he sits down beside Lorraine and lights another cigarette to distract him from the nearby ambulance’s flashing lights.
Lorraine’s suggestion that she and John “murdered” Mr. Pignati is exaggerated—though their recent actions might have contributed to Mr. Pignati’s stress, they aren’t directly responsible for his heart attack. Nonetheless, Lorraine’s belief demonstrates her ability to accept personal responsibility, a trait that has developed in both teens over the course of the novel.
Themes
Elsewhere, John sees a large man in a uniform carrying a bunch of helium balloons. Lorraine watches the man pass by and then bursts into tears. Finally, John gently tells Lorraine it’s time to go. He offers her her sunglasses, and Lorraine takes them. She cautiously offers her hand to John, and he takes it. They look at each other but don’t speak.
For much of the book, John has mocked or invalidated Lorraine’s feelings, but when he takes her hand in this scene, it shows that he’s learned to be less selfish and more compassionate toward her.
Themes
John realizes that their only crime was that they’d “trespassed.” They’d “been where they didn’t belong, and [they] were being punished for it.” They can no longer blame anyone—not their parents, not Norton—for what’s happened. They have only themselves to blame for anything that happens in their lives. “[Baboons] build their own cages,” John imagines Mr. Pignati whispering to John and Lorraine “as he took his children with him.”
When John muses that Mr. Pignati “took his children with him,” he means that part of John and Lorraine died with Mr. Pignati—that is, his death has changed them in a deep, permanent way. They’ve learned—in the hardest way imaginable—that all their actions have consequences.
Themes
