Mr Pignatis House

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. (ch 1, pg 13) In fact, if Lorraine felt like saying one of us murdered Mr. Pignati, she should have blamed Norton. He’s the one who finally caused all the trouble. (ch 1, pg 14) Everything that happened from then on [after they visit Mr. Pignati in the hospital] Lorraine blames me for, and maybe she’s right. ch 14, pg 121) Finally I managed to lift my head and saw Mr. Pignati at the door. He was just standing there looking down at me, and there was no smile on his face. No smile at all. That’s when I passed out. (ch 13 pg 114) “In fact, the thing Lorraine and I liked best about the Pigman was that he didn’t go around saying we were cards or jazzy or cool or hip. He said we were delightful . . . ” (ch 2, pg 24)

“Baboons. Baboons. They build their own cages, we could almost hear Mr. Pignati whisper, as he took his children with him. (ch 15, pg 149) “But I gave up all that kid stuff now that I’m a sophomore. The only thing I do now that is faintly criminal is writing on desks. ” (ch 1, pg. 3) “Would you like a glass of wine? ” Mr. Pignati offered, straightening up a few things in the living room. It was great how happy he was to see us. I can’t remember Bore, or my mother either for that matter, ever looking happy to see me, let alone when I came into the house with a friend. (ch 7, pg 56) John is trying to understand his and Lorraine’s role in Mr. Pignati’s death.

He seems undecided about their degree of responsibility If Norton’s actions were the final, most immediate cause of Mr. Pignati’s final illness and death, does this mean that only Norton is responsible? John still stops short of accepting full responsibility for the disaster of the party and its effect on Mr. Pignati This is a moment of horror for John, when Mr. Pignati returns from the hospital unexpectedly and sees the damage to his house and, most of all, his pig collection. This is one of the very few times that Mr. Pignati doesn’t greet John with a big smile.

That John doesn’t like old people to go around saying cool sayings. That the baboon was somehow connected to the Pigman. That he somewhat thinks of himself as a grown-up There is an enormous contrast between the lack of welcome Lorraine and John feel in their own homes and the incredibly welcome Mr. Pignati gives them. We still pretended we were John and Lorraine Pignati because only members of the immediate family were allowed to visit. (ch 11,pg 105) I think cemeteries are one of the loveliest places to be—if you’re not dead, of course.

The hills and green grass and flowers are much nicer than what you get what you’re alive. Sometimes we go there at midnight and hide behind stones to scare the @#$% out of each other. (ch 7, 55) By the time we left, I was so glad to see the outside world I thought I had been in prison for seventy-three years. The smell of hospitals always makes me think of death. In fact, I think hospitals are exactly what graveyards are supposed to be like. They ought to bury people in hospitals and let sick people get well in the cemeteries (ch 11, pg 104)

The position of Mr. Pignati’s head on the floor made his face look a little like my father’s and I didn’t like the feeling it gave me. Up until then, I had never been particularly disturbed about seeing a corpse—even when I’d have to sit for an hour or so at a funeral parlor when some relative had died. (ch 15,pg 148) “No, no, no,” she said in her best grating voice, all the while shining the coffee table in our sparkling living room, which sparkles because nobody’s allowed to live in it. She’s got plastic covers on everything.

I mean, I like my Mom and all that, but she runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. (ch 5, pg 28) The house [Mr. Pignati’s] had a nice warm smell to it. We had to walk through a hall that had a lot of old junk stored in it, and then we went into this living room that had all that old kind of stuffed furniture with lace things that cover the arms so you don’t wear them out. (ch 5, pg 31) I didn’t want anyone really to take advantage of the old man. Some people might think that’s what I was doing, but not the way Norton would have. ch 5, pg 35) That John and Lorraine are so used to the Pigman that they act like his own children John and Lorraine have figuratively assumed the identities of Mr. Pignati’s “children,” and now they assume these identities literally Ironically, John feels more at home in cemeteries than in his own home. John demonstrates the originality of his thought. His reflection that hospitals are deathly and cemeteries are peaceful and full of greenery actually makes sense That the Pigman looked like his Dad and he even worried about his dad dying.

John describes a living room, which, ironically, no one is allowed to live in Mr. Pignati’s house is a complete opposite of John’s. It has a nice warm smell, not a disinfectant smell; it is cluttered with old junk, not obsessively neat; and it has a comfortable living room with comfortable furniture, not covered with plastic. This sure seems like another instance where John is trying, successfully, to convince himself that taking money from an old man under a false pretext is not taking advantage of him.