How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter)
Quote #1
[John:] I think she [his English teacher] really goes for me the way she always laughs a little when she talks to me and says I'm such a card. A card she calls me, which sounds ridiculous coming out of the mouth of an old-maid English teacher who's practically fifty years old. I really hate it when a teacher has to show that she isn't behind the times by using some expression which sounds to up-to-date you know for sure she's behind the times. Besides card really isn't up-to-date anymore, which makes it even more annoying. In fact, the thing Lorraine and I liked best about the Pigman was that he didn't go around saying we were cards or jazzy or cool or hip. He said we were delightful, and if there's one way to show how much you're not trying to make believe you're not behind the times, it's to go around saying people are delightful. (2)
We've mentioned how the adults in this novel, except Mr. Pignati, are absent, clueless, corrupt, dishonest, cruel, or all of the above. But this English teacher seems to be an exception: is she flirting with John? It sure looks like it. Interesting, too, how John's definition of old age is "practically fifty" – is 48 or so really so old? This is the only passage that contains cultural references, such as slang, indicating that the novel takes place in the late 1960s, when it was written.
Quote #2
[Lorraine:] He sounded like such a nice old man, but terribly lonely. He was just dying to talk. (4)
Mr. Pignati's loneliness is apparent the very first time Lorraine, pretending to be a charity worker collecting money, talks to him on the phone. Poor Mr. Pignati just wants someone with whom to talk and tell jokes.
Quote #3
[John:] I didn't want anyone really to take advantage of the old man. Some people might think that's what I was doing, but not the way Norton would have. (5)
This sure seems like another instance where John is trying, successfully, to convince himself that taking money from an old man under a false pretext is not taking advantage of him. Well, what would you call it, John?
Quote #4
[John:] When Angelo Pignati came to the door, I wish you could have seen him. He was in his late fifties and was pretty big, and he had a bit of a beer stomach. But the part that slaughtered me was this great big smile on his face. 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. (5)
In this description, Mr. Pignati looks...sort of like...one of his pigs. Interesting, also, how he is only in his late fifties; the rest of the book makes him seem much older. What makes John think of the Santa Claus image? Perhaps Mr. Pignati's innocence?
Quote #5
[After Mr. Pignati tells them his wife is in California] John: For a moment he [Mr. Pignati] 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. (5)
Like Lorraine, John is observant; he notices not only Mr. Pignati's reaction to his wife's absence, but also Lorraine's reaction to Mr. Pignati's reaction.
Quote #6
[John:] It was a semiprivate room, and I'd better not tell you about the other patient in there that made it semiprivate because he looked like he wasn't long for this world. They had a guy with some kind of oxygen-tent thing nearby that looked like a malaria net. (11)
John's breezy description of a dying man seems out of place in the context of his real concern for Mr. Pignati. He sounds kind of like…Lorraine's mom.
Quote #7
[John:] But I did care. She [Lorraine] thinks she knows everything that goes on inside me, and she doesn't know a thing. What did she want from me—to tell the truth all the time? To run around saying it did matter to me that I live in a world where you can grow old and be alone and have to get down on your hands and knees and beg for friends? A place where people just sort of forget about you because you get a little old and your mind's a bit senile or silly? Did she think that didn't bother me underneath? That I didn't know if we hadn't come along the Pigman would've just lived like a vegetable until he died alone in that dump of a house? (15)
John admits that he puts on a façade to hide his real feelings of disgust at society's treatment of old people. It seems that he has matured. On the other hand, what about the last sentence in this passage? Is this prediction true? Or is it one of John's rationalizations?
Quote #8
[John:] Maybe I would rather be dead than to turn into the kind of grown-up people I knew. What was so hot about living anyway if people think you're a disturbing influence just because you still think about God and Death and the Universe and Love. My poor mother and father—I wanted to tell them that they no longer wonder what they're doing in the world while I stand here going out of my mind. (15)
John's anger at the kind of grown-up people he knows, and his desire not to turn into them, seems justified.
Quote #9
[John:] We had trespassed too—been where we didn't belong, and we were being punished for it. Mr. Pignati had paid with his life. But when he died something in us had died as well. (15)
What, exactly, is John saying here? Does he really think that it was "trespassing" for Mr. Pignati to come into his and Lorraine's world, and vice-versa? Or is he using the word "trespassing" ironically? And what, specifically, had died in him and Lorraine when Mr. Pignati died?
Quote #10
[John:] Baboons.
Baboons.
They build their own cages, we could almost hear the Pigman whisper, as he took his children with him. (15)
The novel ends with another of John's cryptic statements. This is an especially beautiful passage, and it is thought-provoking. In what way do baboons build their own cages? More likely, baboons are a metaphor for people. (See the discussion on cages in "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory.") Every character in the novel might be seen as trapped in a metaphorical cage. And who are the children that Mr. Pignati takes with him? Bobo, certainly, but Bobo is not plural, and the passage says "children." Could this refer to John's and Lorraine's earlier, less mature identities?