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The Oath & Chapters 1–4

Summary: The Oath

The novel opens with a declaration from John Conlan and Lorraine Jensen, two high school students, that they are writing down what they recall about their experiences with Mr. Angelo Pignati.

Summary: Chapter 1

John, a discontented sophomore, narrates the first chapter. He tells about his past school misdeeds, including setting off firecracker bombs in the bathroom, and explains that he and Lorraine are writing this narrative because someone referred to as “the Pigman” has died and Lorraine feels deeply upset.

Summary: Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is told from Lorraine’s point of view, and the first two chapters establish this recurring pattern of narration in which John and Lorraine take turns telling the story. Lorraine, a sophomore and John’s closest friend, shows more inward focus. She talks about their feelings and personalities. Lorraine explains that they must write down what happened before they move on and forget about it. Lorraine reveals several key details about herself and John. Lorraine, as her mother continually points out, is unattractive, but John is good-looking. He also is a habitual liar, and Lorraine thinks his father, an alcoholic, is the cause of John’s addiction to cigarettes and alcohol. Lorraine has more compassion than John, but despite his show of hostility toward others, Lorraine believes he is a compassionate person who reaches out to others. The two teens became friends after she moved to the neighborhood the previous year. One day he sat next to her on the bus and started laughing like a lunatic. At first confused and annoyed by his behavior, Lorraine ended up laughing along with him.

Summary: Chapter 3

John comments on Lorraine’s physical appearance, noting that she is more attractive than her mother makes out. John wants to be an actor, while Lorraine wants to be a writer. One afternoon, the two friends make prank phone calls with their schoolmates Dennis Kobin and Norton Kelly. The kids compete to see who can keep the person who answers on the phone the longest. They pick random numbers from the phone book, and so far, Dennis holds the record. John blames Lorraine for getting them involved with Mr. Pignati because she chose his number. He believes they may have sped up the older man’s death but asserts that they did not murder him.

Summary: Chapter 4

After Dennis and Norton start cheating to pick their numbers, Lorraine peeks and finds a number to a house in her neighborhood so that she could pretend to be calling on behalf of a neighborhood charity. Angelo Pignati, a jolly-sounding man, answers her call. Lorraine claims to be seeking donations for a charitable organization. When she laughs into the phone, she covers for herself by lying that someone at the office told a joke. Mr. Pignati asks her to relate the joke to him. As he continues to talk, Lorraine regrets calling him because he sounds nice but lonely. Lorraine realizes that John is the reason she now tells lies. He prevaricates to make his life more exciting but often comes to believe his own lies. Lorraine thinks John learned how to lie from his parents. She returns to the conversation to hear Mr. Pignati volunteer to give a donation. Lorraine refuses to tell him to send it to her house, so John grabs the receiver.

Analysis: The Oath & Chapters 1–4

The Pigman begins at the end. In the first chapter, John states that Mr. Pignati, the title character, is dead. This deliberate authorial choice serves to infuse the rest of the novel with a sense of foreboding and sets the stage for a journey of discovering the truth. Readers cannot help but wonder what happened to Mr. Pignati and what role these high school students, who clearly have a story they need to tell, played in his death. “Maybe we speeded things up a little, but you really can’t say we murdered him. Not murdered him,” John declares at the close of Chapter 2, tacitly accepting that he has some culpability in Mr. Pignati’s death while piquing readers’ curiosities. The reader dives into the book with the expectation of finding complicated answers to the many questions surrounding Mr. Pignati and his death.

The earliest chapters introduce and quickly develop the characters of Lorraine and John as close friends, really one another’s only true friend despite seeming to have little in common. With only scant details, Lorraine and John come to life as two teenagers drawn together by a loneliness that results from troubled, unsupportive parents. Despite such similar backgrounds, they occupy different positions within their relationship. John emerges as the leader, playing cruel, potentially dangerous pranks at school and initiating the friendship with Lorraine. Further emphasizing Lorraine’s lesser status, which she fully accepts, is her habit of making excuses for John’s addictions and actions. She constantly engages in armchair psychoanalysis, drawing on psychological terms and knowledge to analyze John’s behavior and blame it on someone else. She seeks to forestall acknowledging John’s poor behavior and the impact his actions have on others. Her obvious discomfort only enhances the reader’s interest in knowing the truth behind Mr. Pignati’s death.

The action itself kicks off with the prank phone calls. This third chapter marks the moment that the plot becomes active rather than passive and simply revolving around the thoughts in Lorraine’s and John’s heads. Lorraine’s ensuing conversation with Mr. Pignati sets up many of the characters’ feelings that will persist throughout the novel. Mr. Pignati is a trusting, lonely man, and Lorraine has misgivings about her and John’s relationship with him and what it will lead to. The first tacit indication of Lorraine’s regret comes when she stops faithfully recording the dialogue from her conversation with Mr. Pignati. This shift in narration is a clue that she realizes she is lying to a desperate and gullible old man and that she has awareness of her own discomfort. Lorraine’s break from what is happening right then is so strong that the text of the novel reflects it as the author includes a section break between Lorraine talking about John’s lying and Mr. Pignati drawing her back to the phone conversation with the question “Miss Truman, are you still there?”

The chapters focusing on the conversation with Mr. Pignati also reinforce John and Lorraine’s connection and disagreement through key details. The fund name Lorraine makes up is the “L & J Fund,” emphasizing their linkage and the ouster of Dennis and Norton. Yet Chapter 4 ends with John and Lorraine disagreeing about receiving the money. John forcibly takes over Lorraine’s phone conversation with Mr. Pignati to tell him how to give them the ten-dollar “donation.” Even early in the novel, readers see that deceit and lies prevail over compassion and care.

Next section Chapters 5 & 6

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