The Pigman is told from the perspective of high school sophomores Lorraine Jensen and John Conlan. The book takes the form of a confession in which John and Lorraine look back on their experience getting to know an old man named Mr. Pignati and examine how a series of selfish, unthinking decisions they made contributed to his recent death. From the start, then, the book establishes death as one of its core ideas, and Mr. Pignati’s death is just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the teens seem rather obsessed with death—a local cemetery is their favorite place to hang out, and Lorraine is haunted by what she calls “bad omens,” strange things she witnessed that she believes, in retrospect, foreshadowed Mr. Pignati’s eventual demise. John, meanwhile, engages in harmful behaviors like smoking cigarettes and alcohol abuse.
Lorraine suggests that John engages in harmful behaviors because he wants to die. Eventually, John thinks she might be right, and he even considers that being dead might be preferable to being alive, since “[living] people think you’re a disturbing influence just because you still think about God and Death and the Universe and Love.” John’s speculation offers insight into why he and Lorraine are so consumed with thoughts of death: because nobody they know, least of all the adults in their lives, is willing to talk about death with them. For instance, Lorraine’s father died when she was very young, yet Lorraine’s mother never talks about him to Lorraine (they separated before Lorraine was born due to Lorraine’s father’s infidelity, and Lorraine’s mother still resents him). Furthermore, death anxiety doesn’t diminish as one grows up. Mr. Pignati’s wife, Conchetta, died sometime before the events of the novel take place, and when Mr. Pignati first meets Lorraine and John, he claims that Conchetta is away on vacation, seemingly to avoid thinking about her death and confronting his lingering grief. Thus, The Pigman suggests that anxiety about death is just as prevalent as death itself. Furthermore, the novel suggests that, not only does ignoring death do nothing to evade death itself, but that not having an outlet to talk about death only exacerbates a person’s anxieties about the subject.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Death and Grief ThemeTracker
Death and Grief Quotes in The Pigman
The truth and nothing but the truth, until this memorial epic is finished, So Help Us God!
Now Lorraine can blame all the other things on me, but she was the one who picked out the Pigman’s phone number. If you ask me, I think he would have died anyway. Maybe we speeded things up a little, but you really can’t say we murdered him.
Not murdered him.
“How long has she been gone?” Lorraine asked, trying to be kind, in that English accent of hers.
“She’s been out there about a month now.”
For a moment he looked as though he was going to cry, and then suddenly he changed the subject. Lorraine’s nervous radar was in full operation, and I could tell it made her sad to look at the old man.
I don’t happen to buy all of Lorraine’s stuff about omens. She talks about me distorting, but look at her. I mean, she thinks she can get away with her subliminal twists by calling them omens, but she doesn’t fool me.
Then I got very sad because I knew I wasn’t really wondering about the guy underneath me, whoever he was. I was just interested in what was going to happen to me. I think that’s probably the real reason I go to the graveyard. I’m not afraid of seeing ghosts. I think I’m really looking for ghosts. I want to see them. I’m looking for anything to prove that when I drop dead there’s a chance I’ll be doing something a little more exciting than decaying.
By the time we left, I was so glad to see the outside world I thought I had been in prison for seventy-three years. The smell of hospitals always makes me think of death. In fact I think hospitals are exactly what grave-yards are supposed to be like. They ought to bury people in hospitals and let sick people get well in the cemeteries.
The room was very dark though I could make out the shapes of pigs all around me. But instead of being on a table the pigs were arranged on a long black container, and as I started to realize what it was the fingers propelling my legs tightened and moved me closer. I felt the same horrible force taking control of my arms, and I couldn’t stop my hands from moving down to the lid of the box. When I touched it my hands went cold, and I knew I was about to open a coffin. I started to cry and plead and call to God to stop me as the lid began to rise.
Our life would be what we made of it—nothing more, nothing less.
