The Pigman

A child's relationship with his parents is essential in the formation of future relationships and behaviors. John's parents seem out of touch with him because of their age (his nickname for his mom...

The three omens that Lorraine thinks she sees at the zoo are the lady selling peanuts, the peacock, and the kid sitting outside the vampire bat exhibit. She thinks the omens are saying that bad...

The conflict of a story is defined as the struggle between opposing forces. One way to simplify the struggle is to determine if it is man vs nature, man vs man, man vs self, or so on. For John and...

Presumably, Lorraine's mother is a fairly attractive woman, or, at the very least, she was at one point. The narrator does not give readers a lengthy physical description of Mrs. Jensen, but we are...

Readers are not actually told the cause of death for Mr. Pignati. We aren't even given a decent description of his final moments in order to check for signs and symptoms of a cause of death. We...

Readers can find the answer to this question near the very end of chapter nine. Chapter nine, narrated by John, is where the readers see John trying to figure out why exactly he is the way that he...

Both John and Lorraine change a great deal over the course of the book. What is great about this book is that the chapters alternate between those two characters telling the story, so readers get...

In Lorraine's nightmare, the pig room beckons to her. Despite her apprehension, she is irresistibly drawn to it by unseen forces. In her dream, Lorraine screams for John, but there is no answer....

Mrs. Jensen is Lorraine's miserable mother in Paul Zindel's The Pigman. Mrs. Jensen is depicted as a cynical, pessimistic woman, who is extremely insecure, hypocritical, and suspicious of her...

In The Pigman John and Lorraine attend the same high school. They meet for the first time on the school bus one morning. Lorraine's a bit of a loner; none of the boys are interested in her and no...

The cemetery is where John and his friends go to drink, so it is kind of a hang out for them where they can do things they aren't necessarily supposed to do and not get caught. John also finds the...

Norton is curious about Mr. Pignati because he wants to exploit the old man. He wonders if the Pigman "has...got anything worth stealing", and is excited when John tries to divert his interest by...

In The Pigman, by Paul Zindel, John and Lorraine are having a party at the Pigman's house, but it gets out of hand. There are about forty people there, some of whom weren't even invited, and of...

Mr. Pignati, John, and Lorraine essentially function as a family unit. Mr. Pignati's wife has died, so he is all alone. John's home life is awful. His father is a drunk that verbally abuses him,...

In addition to the solid metaphors provided by the previous answer, a good example of a metaphor can be found in chapter 13. Chapter 13 is one of the chapters that is narrated by John, and it is...

Mrs. Conlan unfortunately doesn't do much about letting her opinion on John's drinking and smoking be known. She does things like interrupt every argument with a trivial offer of a pleasantry or...

John and Lorraine shared a friendship since the moment he sat next to her on the bus. It is not until chapter 11, when we discover that John has romantic feelings for Lorraine. Both have developed...

John’s news is that Mrs. Pignati was dead. When John tells Lorraine that Pigman’s (Mr. Pignati’s) wife was dead, she is suspicious. To her, he is just a funny, harmless old man. “His wife’s...

John and Lorraine become friends with the Pigman - real name Mr Pignati - in a rather unusual way, by playing a trick on him. Bored and dissatisfied with their lives, John and Lorraine, along with...

There are a couple of reasons why Lorraine is not a fan of Baron Park Zoo. Firstly, she doesn't like seeing all the creatures kept in captivity just so that people can gawk at them. Secondly, she...

John is friends with Norton and Dennis before meeting Lorraine. They take her on as the fourth friend in their group and include her in drinking beer with them in the cemetery at a place called...

Dennis Kobin is a friend of John and Lorraine. He is usually paired with Norton Kelly, and the two are described as "demented", and are always causing trouble. Of the pair, Dennis is the...

John and Lorraine's first visit happens in chapter five after they have conned Mr. Pignati over the phone into giving them money for a fake charity. They show up to collect the money from the poor...

The chapters in Paul Zindel's The Pigman alternate between narrators John and Lorraine, so nothing is said by John about Lorraine's mother in chapter 11. Chapter 10, however, is where Lorraine...

Lorraine's perspective of John is sweet and kind. She feels like he portrays himself worse that he really is. For example, John writes the first chapter and talks about him smoking, swearing,...

Miss Reillen is the librarian at Franklin High School, where John and Lorraine are students. Since both John and Lorraine have seventh-period study at the library, they see Miss Reillen everyday....

Lorraine's feelings for John change slightly through the novel. At the beginning of the story, it is clear that Lorraine thinks of John as a friend. She thinks he is an attractive friend, but...

Mrs. Piganti died of natural causes, probably from a sudden illness because she died before her husband. Although Lorraine is convinced that Mr. Pignati killed his wife and buried her body in the...

John and Lorraine are not actually arrested, because Mr. Pignati declines to press charges. When the police arrive at the party, however, everyone else had run away except for Lorraine and John,...

Lorraine and John first become involved with Mr. Pignati when they are prank calling people. Lorraine is supposed to choose a phone number randomly from the phone book, but she chooses a number...

The answer to this question can be found in the closing paragraphs of chapter 7 and the beginning paragraphs of chapter 8. Chapter 7 sees John and Lorraine at Mr. Pignati's house in the evening,...

It's no secret that John and Norton are enemies. "Lorraine told you she thinks Norton and I hate each other. It's true," (90). Although John may drink and smoke, he's a good person at heart. Norton...

Lorraine feels a degree of sympathy for her mother because she is an empathetic young girl, and she knows her mother really does have a difficult life. Lorraine's mother is working at a job she...

The book's opening "oath" tells readers a bit about the answer to this question: Being of sound mind and body on this 15th day of April in our sophomore year at Franklin High School, let it be...

Lorraine's mother is a single mom who works fulltime as a hospice nurse. When Lorraine was little, her mother had just gotten a divorce from her cheating husband when he was involved in a car crash...

Chapter 6 in Paul Zindel's The Pigman is when John and Lorraine meet Mr. Pignati at the Baron Park Zoo. Lorraine doesn't like zoos anyway because she can't stand seeing the animals locked up and...

John and Lorraine attend the same high school, so it is perhaps inevitable that they'd meet at some point. Their first meeting takes place on the school bus one morning. John sits next to Lorraine...

A helpful way of working out how to create a thesis statement is considering the themes of the text as a whole and then selecting one to base your thesis statement on. One of the interesting facts...

John and Lorraine have a party at Mr. Pignati's place while he is at the hospital, and the party quickly gets out of hand. Everyone is drunk, and John and some others don roller skates and dance on...

One theme that I think is integral to the entire story deals with friends and family. John and Lorraine do not come from great homes. Each home situation is abusive in different ways, so John and...

The scene where John and Lorraine meet their two friends at the cemetery appears in chapter seven of Paul Lindel's The Pigman. By this time in the story, John and Lorraine have secretly separated...

Lorraine's father is not in the story. He died six years before the events of the story take place. Lorraine doesn't even remember anything about her father, because Lorraine's mother legally...

Readers should look near the beginning of chapter 9 for this answer. Chapter 9 is one of the chapters that is narrated by John, and John admits that Lorraine is correct about John's feelings toward...

I think Lorraine bought her mother stockings with the Pigman's money because she knows her mother needs some, and, despite their differences, she loves her mother and wants to help her...

Readers can begin finding this information at the end of Chapter 3. John and Lorraine are telling readers about their prank phone calls and some of the games that they try to play with the people...

Unfortunately, readers are never given an exact answer to this question. What we do know is that Mr. Pignati loved her very much, and he is basically lost without her. This is probably why he...

The Pigman is written from the first person perspective; however, the novel throws a bit of a twist on the narrative voice. Readers get two first person perspectives. John is our narrator for...

John and Lorraine are high school friends who meet a man named Mr. Pignati. After developing a wonderfully loving friendship with him over a period of months, Mr. Pignati dies of a heart attack....

From Lorraine's point of view, Norton Kelly is TROUBLE. She says that he "has eyes like a mean mouse, and he's the type of kid who thinks everyone's trying to throw rusty beer cans at him". He's...

Bobo the baboon apparently died of pneumonia. After Mr. Pignati comes home from the hospital to find his house trashed because of a party that John and Lorraine had thrown there, the two teenagers...