A Book Review : “The Pigman (1968)”

Has anyone ever wondered if they could read a book that is fun and relatable, but also emotional and deep? “The Pigman” is a 1968 novel by Paul Zindel. Pigman is a novel with a very unique concept for the time, as it was one of the first mainstream novels of the time wherein the agebase that Pigman was aimed for could legitimately relate to the main characters. The plot revolves around 2 teenagers named John and Lorraine.One night, Lorraine makes a prank call to a lonely man named Mr. Pignati, masquerading as a Charity worker. They eventually go over to get the money he offered, where he invites them to the zoo with him. Lorraine and John begin to make this a regular thing as an escape from their daily lives (That being Lorraine’s horrible mother and John’s judgemental, boring parents), which Mr. Pignati gives. During one of their visits, Mr. Pignati has a heart attack. Lorraine and John decide to take care of his house while he’s away, and John throws a party where the whole house is destroyed, including Mr. Pignati’s prized pig figurine collection. John takes it upon himself to make amends by taking Mr. Pignati to the zoo, where he dies of a second heart attack.  At this point in the story, Lorraine and John have just met Mr. Pignati at his house to collect the money he offered them.  “ He looked so glad to see us I thought his eyes were going to twinkle out of his head. He would’ve made one @#$% of a Santa Claus if you had put a white beard on him and stuck him on a street corner in December with a little whiskey on his breath. ‘Hi! Are you the charity people?’ He didn’t seem to be surprised that we were kids. He just seemed glad to see us. ‘Yes. This is Miss Truman, and I am Mr. Wander-meyer.’ The house had a nice warm smell to it. We had to walk through a hall that had a lot of old junk stored in it, and then we went into this living room that had all that old kind of stuffed furniture with lace things that cover the arms so you don’t wear them out. ‘Please sit down,’ he said, smiling away like crazy. ‘I’ve got some good homemade wine, if you like’” ( Zindel 18-19  ). In this quote, Mr. Pignati appears to be absurdly excited about 2 people he does not even know coming to his house. This suggests that Mr. Pignati is a lonely person who will spend time with literally anyone, so long as he has company around. It is actually quite sad knowing how Mr. Pignati blindly put his trust in people who would go on to betray him so badly.     John chooses to throw a party at Mr. Pignati’s house. Just before the party, John states,  “I really did think Mr. Pignati would have wanted us to have a few friends over. Of course, he would have liked to be there so he wouldn’t feel he was missing anything. I knew how much he’d enjoy hearing about a party when he came home. He’d want to know every little detail, just like he asked about everything we did in school” ( Zindel 65 ). John made one of his many lapses in judgement, expecting once again, that everything would go his way, and that no bad consequences would come of his poor choice. He did not account for any of the problems that could arise from the situation he willingly put himself in, such as teens not recognizing the value of Mr. Pignati’s things. Because of his lack of thinking, Mr. Pignati’s pig collection gets broken, leaving Mr. Pignati incredibly hurt, due to not only having his most sentimental items broken, but by John’s betrayal. To conclude, because Of John’s foolishness, he is forced to make amends with Mr. Pignati on his own volition like a mature adult, and not laugh it off with a snarky comment when he is called out.     Pigman’s author, Paul Zindel, uses a framing device wherein the reader gets Lorraine’s perspective and John’s perspective on the same events to convey how different the 2 of them really are. Before the party at Mr. Pignati’s house, Lorraine and John say,  “‘We’re going to have a few friends over for drinks tonight.’ ‘Are you crazy?’.....I really did think Mr. Pignati would have wanted us to have a few friends over…..I knew how much he’d enjoy hearing about a party when he came home”  ( Zindel, 64-65 ). Lorraine thinks that having a party at Mr. Pignati’s house would be a bad idea, and the reader would also think so for obvious reasons. However, Zindel’s framing device tells the reader that John thinks it would be a great favor to Mr. Pignati because he loves hearing about Lorraine and John’s life to fulfill his own lonely life. This framing device gives the reader insight into both of the main characters. It tells the reader their morals, their thoughts on each other, what their instant reactions to situations are, and how they view the situation they are stuck in. and this benefits the reader for two reasons. For one, it is easier for the reader to not get the impression that one character is necessarily the “bad one” for disagreeing with the perspective character (in the form of the reader only seeing what they see), and the second would be that this makes it easier to relate to a character. If the reader related to John more than Lorraine, but Lorraine was the POV character, then it would be a great disservice to the reader to be stuck inside the head of someone they do not like very much, and vice versa. All in all, the novel is aided greatly by the use of double pov.     John’s  willingness to twist the truth so far to get what he wants is a prime example of deception in the novel. When John and Lorraine meet at the street corner, John tells Lorraine,  “‘You read all those books, and you don’t even know when a man is thinking about committing suicide.’....’You only know about the obvious kind—like when someone’s so desperate they’re going to jump off a bridge or slit their wrists. There are other kinds, you know.’....’He sounded just like the kind of guy who’d commit suicide by taking a cold shower and then leaving the windows open to die of pneumonia!’” (Zindel 18) John does this all throughout the novel. He takes a vague hint (and sometimes not even hint) of something major, and bends the truth so far that it is not even close to the truth anymore. He decides to take advantage of Mr. Pignati’s kindness, and when Lorraine does not want to, he spins Mr. Pignati’s willingness to have a long, personal conversation with Lorraine into Mr. Pignati wanting to commit suicide. A rather morally bankrupt thing to do for only 10 dollars. As a result, John continues to deceive people through this method because Lorraine gives in to his whining.      On a scale of 1-10, I would give this book a solid 8/10. Despite a pretty basic story, the characters in this book are very well written. This book was written in 1968, and is in some ways a product of its time, but Lorraine and John feel like real people that the reader can see in themself, or in others. Anyone can relate to either of these 2, and that fact is aided even more by the split POV, which gives a reader a more detailed character. For example, at the end of the book, Mr. Pignati dies of a second heart attack at the zoo, and John writes that they now realize they are accountable for their actions. This is a perfect example of the depth of these characters. John and Lorraine, on surface level, seem just as shallow as the rest of us, but when the reader gets to know them, through what they say about each other and through their own thoughts, the reader gets to see that they are complex and have a pretty interesting personality. Despite this, however, they are not very mature, nor do they understand the weight of their actions. In layman’s terms, just because they are interesting and likeable, it does not mean they have a lot of depth. This is shown very cleverly when John talks about what It is really like to be an adult, because even though what he is saying sounds meaningful, it is not something that one needs maturity to think of. It is what teenagers think depth is. By the time Mr. Pignati has died, John and Lorraine now do have depth. They have experienced so much with him, that losing him has made them realize how valuable and important their actions are to those close to them. This character arc illustrates John and Lorraine’s passage from immature, ignorant children, into adults who value the consequences of their actions. Teenagers would be the best people to read and enjoy the book. Teens would enjoy the book because John and Lorraine’s characters, as well as their arc, are something every teen can relate to in some way or another. Overall, the main thing that a reader can learn from Pigman is that a person’s actions have weight, and how those actions affect the others