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Chapter 12
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 concedes that he really did think Mr. Pignati would want them to have fun with their friends. Dennis is the first guest to arrive that night, a bottle of his father’s whiskey in hand. To John’s relief, Dennis arrives alone—John had told Dennis not to invite Norton, not wanting the party to get too out of hand, and Dennis apparently listened to him. At first, Lorraine is apprehensive about using all of Mr. Pignati’s food, but John tells her that Mr. Pignati bought it just for them anyway. And after a while, she gets over her apprehension and throws herself into preparing the hors d'oeuvres, placing ricotta cheese, frogs’ legs, and fish killies on crackers.
It seems rather farfetched that John would believe that Mr. Pignati would want a bunch of high schoolers over at his house drinking and making a mess—more likely, John is using this logic in an attempt to assuage the guilt he feels in the party’s aftermath. Thus, John’s logic here shows his continued failure to take responsibility for his actions. Meanwhile, Lorraine’s failure to stop John from throwing the party—even though she clearly thought it was a bad idea—is almost as bad.
Themes
Deanna Deas and her best friend Helen Kazinski arrive next. The girls are known as “Beauty and the Beast” around school, since Deanna is beautiful, and Helen is very overweight. Other peers arrive after them. Everyone is nice, but according to John, they all have “a problem all his own.” Jen Appling, for example, is over six feet tall. Though John and Lorraine didn’t want to have too many people over, they end up calling more and more people. Janice Dickery arrives sometime later—she’s nice and dropped out of school junior year. John also invites Jack Brahn to the party, but he refuses to attend when he hears that Janice Dickery is there—Jack is the reason Janice dropped out.
This is another aspect of the book that contemporary readers may find hasn’t aged well. While John’s cruel description of Helen and Deanna is in line with John’s rather unthinking, unempathetic personality, criticizing Helen’s weight isn’t all that necessary to furthering the plot or getting the book’s important points across. The book never makes clear what exactly went on between Jack Brahn and Janice Dickery, but whatever happened, it highlights the book’s central idea that people are dealing with all kinds of hardships, and so it’s important to treat them with compassion and empathy—which seems not to have been the case for Janice, hence her dropping out.
Themes
The band arrives after eight. When they finish setting up and start to play, the party really gets started. In total, there are around 40 kids at the party. The food is gone in no time, even the frogs’ legs and chocolate-covered ants. Melissa Dumas gets too drunk and starts to sing. John and Lorraine moved the furniture onto the patio, leaving room for an open dance floor in the living room. Janice Dickery starts to dance suggestively, which helps explain why she had to drop out of school. As the party gets more raucous, Lorraine tells John that the nuns across the street are going to call to complain. But John yells at her to shut up—he’s still upset with her for telling him to take out the garbage earlier.
As the party gets more out of control, John’s suggestion that Mr. Pignati would have wanted them to have a party becomes even less convincing. And John’s selfishness further comes through here when he yells at Lorraine for her perfectly reasonable (not to mention responsible) concern that the party will disturb Mr. Pignati’s neighbors. It’s clear that the person John cares most about is himself, not Mr. Pignati or Lorraine.
Themes
Overall, John reflects, the party starts off great. People are having fun, and hardly anything’s been damaged—just a spilled drink and a dropped cigarette burning a small hole in the throw rug. At 10:30, John throws on his roller skates and comes rolling onto the dance floor. Melissa Dumas puts on Lorraine’s skates without asking, much to Lorraine’s irritation.
John further demonstrates his carelessness when he pulls out his roller skates—the very thing that led to Mr. Pignati’s heart attack. It’s clear that John isn’t all that mindful of the ways his poor behavior could escalate the situation once more—he just wants to have a good time and impress people with his antics, as he always has.
Themes
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Norton arrives later, furious that he wasn’t invited. When he confronts John about this, John lies that it was a mistake. Norton runs off after that. John keeps his eye on him, warily observing Norton standing off to the side, assessing the place for things to steal or break. Lorraine is initially worried when she sees Norton, but eventually she and Helen Kazinski head upstairs to change into Conchetta’s clothing. The girls come back downstairs after a short while. Helen looks ridiculous, but John thinks that Lorraine looks as beautiful as she did Monday night. Lorraine, meanwhile, worriedly tells Helen not to rip Conchetta’s dress, which is a bit snug on Helen.
Norton’s arrival isn’t a great sign—John and Lorraine have both stated how “disturbed” and even dangerous Norton is, Norton himself has threatened to intimidate or steal from Mr. Pignati, and now he’s actively assessing Mr. Pignati’s house to determine if there’s anything worth stealing. In short, Norton’s arrival all but guarantees that this party won’t end well. This scene also paints Lorraine in a negative light. Though she, unlike John, seems to recognize the difference between right and wrong, responsible and irresponsible, she doesn’t always act on it. Here, she dresses up in Conchetta’s old clothing even though she knows it’s irresponsible and could result in someone damaging the clothing.
Themes
By this point, the band is playing at full blast. John can’t find Norton anywhere and worries what he’s gotten up to. He yells at Lorraine, who is running around emptying ashtrays, if she’s found Norton. She says he went upstairs. John runs upstairs, encountering Deanna Deas and Janice Dickery, who are dressed in Conchetta’s clothes, on their way back downstairs. John is in a panic by this point, somehow knowing what he’ll find upstairs. Sure enough, he finds Norton in a room upstairs, messing with Mr. Pignati’s things. Norton, Mr. Pignati’s oscilloscope in hand, smiles mischievously when he sees John. When John orders him to drop it, Norton tells John it’s rude not to share with friends. Just then, Lorraine shouts for John, and John heads downstairs to see what she wants.
As readers have likely predicted, Norton has come to this party with bad intentions—he seems set on stealing or otherwise damaging Mr. Pignati’s possessions. It’s increasingly clear that John and Lorraine’s decision to host this party will have devastating consequences and severely impact their relationship with Mr. Pignati. Whether they, and especially John, will be willing to accept responsibility for the damage—material and emotional—that the party will undoubtedly cause is another question.
Themes
Downstairs, a panicked Lorraine motions for John to look out the window—there’s a taxi outside. John tries to convince himself that it can’t be Mr. Pignati, but Lorraine shouts again that someone is walking up the stairs. Meanwhile, John hears the sound of things breaking coming from the pig room. He pushes aside the black curtains and finds Norton inside, smashing the pigs against the table. He sees broken pigs all over the floor. All John can think about is how happy Mr. Pignati looked when he first showed John and Lorraine the pigs. Overcome with rage, John pummels Norton, punching him square in the face. Norton fights back, and John flees.
It's notable that John reacts to Norton destroying the pigs by thinking about how happy the pigs made Mr. Pignati—not about the possibility of himself getting in trouble for the pigs being broken. In this moment, John is thinking about someone else’s wellbeing rather than his own—albeit a little too late, as the pigs are already broken, and John can’t do anything to stop the pain and hurt and betrayal Mr. Pignati will experience when he finds out.
Themes
As John runs from the pig room, he notices that the band has gone silent. Then John hears Lorraine cry out that the Pigman is back. John runs at Norton, pushing him to the floor before falling down himself. John sees blood gush from Norton’s nose and feels momentarily happy. Then he lifts his head and sees Mr. Pignati standing above him—but Mr. Pignati doesn’t look even a little bit happy. John passes out.
Mr. Pignati’s unhappy expression confirms that in throwing the party, John and Lorraine have severely compromised their friendship with Mr. Pignati. They’ve betrayed his trust in a huge way, and whether they’ll be able to get that trust back and repair their friendship remains to be seen. Given the pig collection’s importance to Mr. Pignati, though, the possibility of either happening seems slim at best.
Themes
