The Pigman Chapters 14 & 15 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 14 & 15

Summary: Chapter 14

The kids have left, the police have arrived, and John is loaded into the patrol car with Lorraine climbing in, too. The officer says Mr. Pignati is not pressing charges, and he will not let Lorraine see him. Mr. Pignati is crying. Lorraine unsuccessfully tries to rouse John. An officer asks if their parents know of their friendship with Mr. Pignati. Lorraine becomes terrified of her mother seeing her in Conchetta’s dress, and she momentarily hates John. The officer accompanies her to the door to talk to her mother even though she begs him not to. Lorraine’s mother answers in a bathrobe. Her first question is about Lorraine’s clothes. The officer explains about the drinking at Mr. Pignati’s house, and Lorraine can’t look her mother in the eye, betraying her guilt. Lorraine’s mother continues asking about Lorraine’s clothes and then slaps her. Inside, once the police have gone, Lorraine claims she didn’t do anything wrong and that her mother doesn’t understand that she needs friends. Lorraine’s mother slaps her again, accuses Lorraine of lying, and then breaks down crying. After initially refusing to speak, Lorraine hugs her mom. Once her mother is calmer, Lorraine shares an edited version of the friendship with Mr. Pignati. Lorraine even momentarily but mistakenly believes that her mom understands her.

In bed, Lorraine cries thinking of the state of Mr. Pignati’s house. They were just playing, which is something young animals and humans need to do to prepare them for life. Just before falling asleep, she recalls John’s kiss. Lorraine’s mother wakes her up the next morning, still worrying that Lorraine has done something sexually with Mr. Pignati. Lorraine meets John late in the morning. He looks dispirited. When John got home the previous night, his mother worried that he was tracking in snow, and his dad, looking sick and old, didn’t say anything but told him in the morning he had to go to a psychiatrist. John asks about Mr. Pignati, leading Lorraine to lash out and accuse John of not really caring.

John and Lorraine call Mr. Pignati. John apologizes for the party, offers to pay for the damage, and asks if they can help clean up. Mr. Pignati refuses, and John asks him to meet them at the zoo. Mr. Pignati agrees after John points out how much Bobo must miss Mr. Pignati. Mr. Pignati arrives late in a taxi looking thin and frail. John believes that he has forgiven them for the party but is just weak from the heart attack. John has already bought peanuts for Bobo, and they take the train car to the primate house. At Bobo’s cage, John and Mr. Pignati can’t find the baboon. Nearby, an attendant explains that Bobo died last week. Mr. Pignati does nothing but stare at Bobo’s cage. John tries to get him to leave, gently taking his arm. Mr. Pignati starts to tremble, makes a small cry, and then drops to the floor. The monkeys all start screaming and pulling at the bars. Mr. Pignati is dead.

Summary: Chapter 15

John yells for help and tells Lorraine to leave so she doesn’t get in trouble with her mother. John kneels next to Mr. Pignati to check for a pulse and breath but finds neither. John reflects that he doesn’t want to live in a world where people can grow old all alone. Although John pretends that he doesn’t care, he does, deeply. Lorraine doesn’t know how upset John feels that, at the end of his life, Mr. Pignati only had a baboon as a friend. John contemplates leaving Mr. Pignati alone, but his face reminds him of his dad, and he stays. John starts to feel like he is trapped and in his tomb, his thoughts turning existential. John realizes that he smokes and drinks even if it might kill him because he isn’t compelled by the examples of adulthood around him.

A crowd has gathered. John says goodbye to Mr. Pignati and goes to find Lorraine near the zoo entrance. She remains silent for a minute but then screams that they murdered Mr. Pignati. John wants to blame Mr. Pignati himself for getting involved with kids and trespassing in their lives. A balloon seller runs by, eager to make money off the crowd. John tells Lorraine it is time to go. They stand up, and he takes her hand. They look at one another, both of them, John thinks, understanding they trespassed, too. Mr. Pignati had been punished by death, but something in John and Lorraine has died, too. Now they have no one to blame and no place to hide. They must be responsible for their own lives.

Analysis: Chapters 14 & 15

The final two chapters of The Pigman underscore just how much John and Lorraine have lost with Mr. Pignati’s death. Their own parents clearly have no idea how to help them, merely reacting in their typical, dismissive fashion to any problem. As far as their parents are concerned, life will continue in all its dysfunction. Each of the three parents looks at their child’s behavior through their own lens, so Lorraine’s mother worries about sex, John’s mother cares about keeping her house clean, and John’s father thinks John is crazy and needs to be fixed. Ironically, their parents’ shortcomings are what drove John and Lorraine into the friendship with Mr. Pignati in the first place as John and Lorraine had needs that their parents weren’t coming close to meeting. For John and Lorraine, any hope that their parents will ever understand them feels unlikely after the evening of the party. If their parents can’t be roused to step out of their own comfort zones for the sake of their kids after the police had to bring them home in the middle of the night, little chance exists that they ever will.

The day after the party, John and Lorraine reach out to Mr. Pignati not just to apologize, which they do, but also because they need him in their lives. When Mr. Pignati shows up at the zoo, Lorraine thinks, “He certainly had forgiven us for anything we did over at the house or else he wouldn’t have come.” She tries to convince herself that they can have the same relationship with Mr. Pignati as before, but Mr. Pignati is unsmiling. The only true smile Lorraine notes their whole time with him is when they descend from the touring car to go see Bobo. The baboon is Mr. Pignati’s true friend, not John and Lorraine. The teens fool themselves because they need the connection with Mr. Pignati and they don’t want the pain of taking responsibility for destroying their only positive relationship outside the one they share.

The last chapter of the book, narrated by John, carries the greatest emotional resonance for John and Lorraine and represents their first real reckoning with their larger dilemmas in life as well as their need to drive their own futures. After sending Lorraine away, John remains with Mr. Pignati even though he knows he is dead. He comes to a true moment of clarity, acknowledging his fears that his life and death will have no meaning. These existential thoughts are the first time John is truly honest with himself about the source of his problems. Certainly, alcohol abuse is detrimental to his emotional state, but John is focused on things like “God and Death and the Universe and Love.” How could a person like him ever thrive in a household that centers around cleanliness and a stock exchange job? What makes John’s situation even harder is that he fears his own father’s death, as evidenced by the fact that “the position of Mr. Pignati’s head on the floor made his face look a little like [John’s] father’s, and [he] didn’t like the feeling it gave [him].” Prior to this moment, the only commonality between Mr. Pignati and John’s father was their age. Mr. Pignati’s death forces John to confront his own father’s impending passing and the sad truth that he will never see eye to eye with his father before that occurs.

John vacillates between numerous conflicting emotions as he waits by Mr. Pignati’s body for the ambulance to arrive. He shows tenderness for Mr. Pignati when he speaks to him gently and cleans the saliva on his face. He also has recriminations. Mr. Pignati had imbued their relationship with greater meaning than it actually deserved. They are just a couple of kids, more like Bobo than true friends, another means for Mr. Pignati to fool himself that he still has connections to this world despite Conchetta’s death. At John’s angriest, which he is when Lorraine claims that they murdered Mr. Pignati, John blames Mr. Pignati for befriending kids. John thinks, “When you grow up, you’re not supposed to go back. Trespassing—that’s what he had done.” But he also is aware that he and Lorraine had trespassed, too, trying to force their way into an artificial adulthood they were not ready for.

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