The Pigman

by

Paul Zindel

Personal Responsibility Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Death and Grief  Theme Icon
Personal Responsibility  Theme Icon
Family  Theme Icon
Loneliness  Theme Icon
Compassion  Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Pigman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Personal Responsibility  Theme Icon

Though high school sophomores John and Lorraine might feel that the adults in their life underestimate and talk down to them due to their age, the reality is that they have a lot of growing up to do—in particular, learning to take responsibility for how their actions affect themselves and other people. In fact, The Pigman frames a strong sense of personal responsibility as the defining mark of maturity. At the beginning of the story, John and Lorraine are immature and careless. They have no regard for how their actions affect others, and they blame everyone but themselves for their troubles. For instance, John repeatedly insults any authority figure who tries to tell him off—even if John is in the wrong. John is also a compulsive liar (Lorraine rather euphemistically explains that John “twist[s] things subliminally”)—he blames all kinds of pranks he pulls on the ghost of his Aunt Ahra, and he once told his parents that he hears voices from space inside his head. The circumstances under which the teens meet Mr. Pignati also highlight their immaturity—Mr. Pignati picks up one of their prank phone calls, and John asks him to “donate” to a made-up charity fund.

Lorraine is decidedly more mature than John and has a more developed sense of personal responsibility. However, she, too, demonstrates a lack of personal responsibility by going along with whatever ill-advised schemes John concocts, like lying to Mr. Pignati about the made-up charity fund or throwing a raucous party at Mr. Pignati’s house while he’s at the hospital recovering from a heart attack. And in the end, people close to her suffer the consequences of her passivity: Mr. Pignati overexerts himself dealing with all the stress the teens have put him through with their carelessness and dies of a second heart attack; and when Lorraine’s mother finally learns that Lorraine has been lying to her for months about hanging out with Mr. Pignati, she feels hurt and betrayed. Though of course John and Lorraine aren’t directly responsible for Mr. Pignati’s second, fatal heart attack, they feel they’re at least partly to blame, and it’s the guilt and remorse they feel in response to his death that teaches them that all their actions have consequences. The novel thus suggests that learning how one’s actions affect others is a vital—and unavoidable—part of growing up. 

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Personal Responsibility ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Personal Responsibility appears in each chapter of The Pigman. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Personal Responsibility Quotes in The Pigman

Below you will find the important quotes in The Pigman related to the theme of Personal Responsibility .
The Oath Quotes

The truth and nothing but the truth, until this memorial epic is finished, So Help Us God!

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen (speaker), Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”)
Page Number: x
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen, Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”)
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I blame an awful lot of things on the ghost of Aunt Ahra because she died in our house when she was eighty-two years old.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”), Mr. Conlan (“Bore”), Mrs. Conlan (“The Old Lady”), Aunt Ahra
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:

“You’re ruining your lungs with that thing” was the first remark out of her mouth besides a cough from a misdirected puff from my cigarette. She sounds just like her mother when she says that.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen (speaker), Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”), Mrs. Conlan (“The Old Lady”)
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

“You never wanted to visit lonely people before, or is it that you only like lonely people who have ten dollars?”

“You think you’re the perfect headshrinker with all those psychology books you read, and you really don’t know a thing.”

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen (speaker), Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”)
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen, Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”)
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

As I watched her I remembered all the times she said how hard it was to be a nurse—how bad it was for the legs, how painful the varicose veins were that nurses always got from being on their feet so much. I could see her standing under the street light… just standing there until the bus came. It was easy to feel sorry for her, to see how awful her life was—even to understand a little why she picked on me so. It hadn’t always been like that though.

Related Characters: Lorraine Jensen (speaker), John Conlan, Lorraine’s Mom
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

I had become a disturbing influence, as they say. If I light up a cigarette, all my mother’s really worried about is that I’m going to burn a hole in the rug. If I want a beer, she’s worried I’m not going to rinse the glass out.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Mrs. Conlan (“The Old Lady”)
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen, Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”)
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:

Several other broken pigs were laying all over the floor, and the only thing I could think of at that moment was the proud and happy look on Mr. Pignati’s face when he had shown us the pigs that first day.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen, Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”), Conchetta Pignati, Norton Kelly
Related Symbols: Pigs
Page Number: 164
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

I wanted to phone him and say, Mr. Pignati, we didn’t mean things to work out like that. We were just playing.

Playing

Related Characters: Lorraine Jensen (speaker), John Conlan, Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”)
Related Symbols: Pigs
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

Our life would be what we made of it—nothing more, nothing less.

Related Characters: John Conlan (speaker), Lorraine Jensen, Angelo Pignati (“The Pigman”)
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis: