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. John doesn’t believe in Lorraine’s talk of omens. He thinks they’re her way of “distorting” the truth, like she accuses him of doing. The only difference between his lies and hers are that hers are “eerie”—they make a person uneasy. Besides, John had fun at the zoo, and he think it’s nice that Mr. Pignati and Bobo are friends. Plus, Mr. Pignati bought John and Lorraine a bunch of treats, like ice cream and cotton candy. And at the end of the trip, they finally told Mr. Pignati to call them by their first names, John and Lorraine.
John makes an insightful point about Lorraine’s omens: for as introspective as Lorraine often is, she remains blind to the way her unexamined fears and anxieties skew her perception of the world. It’s clear that both teens have a lot of complicated feelings about their place in the world that they don’t know how to deal with, so they respond by “distorting” reality into something they can manage. Finally, note John and Lorraine’s decision to tell Mr. Pignati their real names—a sign that they’re getting more comfortable with him.
Themes
Lorraine and John go to Mr. Pignati’s house after school the next day, but they don’t get there until seven o’clock, as they run into Dennis and Norton, who want to share a beer in the cemetery with them. They have their beer at Masterson’s Tomb, where all the Mastersons are buried. The tomb is a grand building made of marble. John loves cemeteries.
One can’t be in a cemetery without thinking of the death it represents—yet none of the teens talks about death while they hang out at Masterson’s Tomb, further developing the idea that despite death’s major presence in the lives of the book’s main characters, nobody feels comfortable talking about it outright.
Themes
Once, John ran ahead of Lorraine and everyone else and hid in an overgrown part of the cemetery. He reclined back and looked up at the stars and felt the magnitude of the universe. He wondered if anyone was up there. And he wondered if anyone was down there, imagining what might remain of the corpse that could be buried beneath him. But John realized he wasn’t really thinking about the hypothetical corpse—he was thinking about what would happen to him after he died. He likes the thought of an afterlife—of something more interesting than just “decaying.” Maybe that’s why he likes cemeteries so much.
This scene shows that John does have a lot of thoughts about death—troubling ones, even—yet he feels the need to keep them to himself, perhaps not wanting others to see him as strange or morbid. But it’s clear that keeping his thoughts to himself hasn’t made them go away—to the contrary, it seems that John’s unwillingness to open up to others only makes him think about death more, and not necessarily in a positive way.
Themes
Back in the present, John and Lorraine finally manage to break away from Norton and Dennis, but now they can’t go straight to the Pigman’s, since Lorraine has to check in with Lorraine’s mother first. Lorraine lies and tells her mother she’s going to the library. Over dinner, the Old Lady orders John not to play with his food. John protests, and Bore, who’s still fuming over John gluing the phone lock, breaks his silence to yell at John. The Old Lady beams as she announces that Bore sold more than 300 lots today—Bore has a seat on the Coffee Exchange, and he’s in a good mood if he sells more than 200 lots in a day. Bore moves to have a talk with John, and the Old Lady, nervous, suddenly gets up to fetch the dessert.
This dinner scene gives readers a better sense of John’s family dynamic. Bore is justifiably upset with John for tampering with the telephone, but it seems that regardless of what John has or hasn’t done, Bore’s temper is volatile and intense—a fact that John’s mother’s nervousness makes clear. Her reaction also suggests that John doesn’t really have an ally in his household—he has no parental figure to listen to or support him, and this helps explain why he misbehaves all the time. He just wants someone to notice and respond to him.
Themes
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Bore tells John that John gets in trouble because he has too much free time. He asks John if he’d like to work at the Exchange after school some days. This is the last thing John wants. John tells Bore he has no interest in working at the Exchange because all he really wants is to be an actor—everyone thinks he’d be great at it, since he’s so creative. Bore scoffs and tells John, “Try eating your imagination when you’re hungry sometime.” John protests that he doesn’t want to be just some “phony in the crowd.” Bore replies that he’s just trying to make John learn to work.
Statistically speaking, John’s goal of becoming an actor is rather lofty and impractical, but it’s still cruel and unsupportive of Bore to so readily dismiss John’s dream. While Bore may just be looking out for his son’s future, the way he goes about it only shows John that his father doesn’t care about him as a person and that his dreams don’t matter.
Themes
Just then, the Old Lady appears in the doorway asking if John and Bore would like whipped cream and nuts on their strawberry whirls. John asks if she means real whipped cream or the awful, processed, fake kind. John says he should be nicer to his mother—he’ll regret being rude to her when she’s dead one day. John protests that he’s just trying to “be individualistic.” He begs Bore to give him a little more time to figure out who he is. Bore only orders John to bring his plate out to the kitchen. John does so. In the kitchen, his mom silently appraises John’s face to see what kind of mood John left Bore in. She suggests that John go work on his homework at a friend’s house—Bore works hard, and John should try not to upset him so he can relax. John agrees.
John isn’t always the most sympathetic character—it’s objectively rude and ungrateful of him to insult the food his mother prepared for the family. But the fact remains that he’s still a kid trying to figure things out—meanwhile, his parents are adults and should know that they’re not giving John the love and emotional support he needs to mature and thrive.
Themes
At Mr. Pignati’s later that evening, John forgets all about Bore and the Old Lady. Mr. Pignati offers Lorraine and John some wine, and they gladly accept. John compliments Mr. Pignati’s house, and Mr. Pignati offers to give them a tour. He shows them all around and tells them to make themselves at home. At one point, Mr. Pignati offers Lorraine a bowl of small round things floating in what looks like spaghetti sauce. She eats some and asks what they are. When Mr. Pignati replies that they’re scungilli, something similar to snails, Lorraine’s face turns white, and she excuses herself to use the bathroom.
John’s polite behavior at Mr. Pignati’s house shows what difference having a kind, attentive adult around can have on a kid’s behavior. John is polite and kind to Mr. Pignati because Mr. Pignati is kind to him—meanwhile he acts out at home because he feels unheard, lonely, and not taken seriously.
Themes
John spots a picture of a young girl wearing a confirmation dress and asks who it is. Mr. Pignati stops smiling. He pauses a moment and then explains that it’s his wife, Conchetta. It was the only photo she liked of herself. Then he gets up, looking as though he's about to cry, and tells John to go check out the upstairs.
Again, Mr. Pignati can’t bear to talk about his wife without tearing up, further suggesting that something strange is going on—it’s increasingly clear that Conchetta isn’t in California like Mr. Pignati claims she is.
Themes
Upstairs, John asks Lorraine if she’s found anything interesting. She’s not sure. John pokes around himself. In the bedroom, he finds a closet full of old dresses and a bed covered in a ruffly bedspread. On a dresser, there’s a drawer full of papers. He spots a pamphlet that reads “WHAT EVERY FAMILY SHOULD KNOW.” Wanting to know what it’s about, John opens the pamphlet, which is full of questions about cemetery preferences and caskets. It makes him think about how his high school assigns all these dumb book reports, but no one would know what to do if anyone died. Elsewhere in the drawer, John finds a bunch of jewelry—it seems like Mr. Pignati’s wife didn’t take anything with her to California. Finally, John finds a bill from the Silver Lake funeral home—for the funeral of Conchetta Pignati.
As readers may have guessed by now, Conchetta is dead, not in California. Just like John is unable to talk about his fears about his own death, Mr. Pignati is unable to talk about—or even consciously acknowledge to himself—Conchetta’s death. Instead, he mourns her death alone and in silence, prolonging his grief and his loneliness. Tension builds as the reader wonders what John will do with this new information—will he tell Lorraine? Will he confront Mr. Pignati about Conchetta and try to comfort him? And how will this affect the teens’ new friendship with Mr. Pignati?
Themes
