Piggy Characteristics

Piggy was the character who showed the most effective leadership qualities in the novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. With unflattering physical features/conditions and little to no social skills, Piggy might not seem like the best choice for a leader, but when it comes to leadership, intelligence should be the most important factor. Besides being knowledgeable, Piggy shows a couple of other characteristics that a leader should possess. Throughout the entirety of the novel, the underappreciated boy proves that he has endurance and even courage during certain events that happen.

A person can be seen as intelligent because of many different things. For example, Piggy is intelligent because he knows what is important and what is not important. Piggy understands what sort of situation that him and the rest of the boys are in. He understands that they, the boys on the island, need to have a leader, that they need to have a list of names, and that they need to have a fire if they have any sort of chance at getting rescued. Piggy is the person who brought up the subject of how the boys on the island needed to make a list of everyone there. When the boys on the island recklessly start the first fire on the mountaintop, Piggy is the one to tell them how foolish they had been for

not planning out what they were going to do. Piggy is also one of the only characters who agrees with Ralph that they need to keep the fire going. In most of the novel, Piggy is the voice of reason that nobody listens to because of his unattractive appearance and lack of charisma.
Piggy may have been lacking charisma, but he did not lack positivity and endurance. With all of the other boys on the island not taking him seriously and constantly jeering at him, the reader would expect Piggy’s mood to range from chronically depressed to frustrated to full-on wrathful. Though Piggy does get angry in certain scenes through the book, this anger does not define his overall character. Piggy endures through everything that happens to him up until his tragic death. He never stops being full of support and hope, even after it is obvious that things could not get much worse. When Jack breaks his glasses, he gets angry, but then he moves on, like a leader should.
Lastly, Piggy shows courage.

There were many times in the book when Piggy was fearful, but that does not take away the times Piggy actually stood up for himself. Mostly, and for good reason, Piggy stood up against Jack. While Piggy is afraid of Jack, he does not always reveal this fear, instead deciding to defend himself and try to make the other boys listen to him. When Jack takes Piggy’s glasses, it is Piggy himself who wants to go to Jack’s fort and get his glasses back. Piggy is smart enough to know that Jack does not like him, and most likely wants him dead. To willingly go to an enemy’s fortress in an attempt to keep peace is an act of courage that not just anybody could pull

off.
It is certainly a shame that the boys on the island let something as shallow as physical characteristics decide who their leader was. If they had not been so simple minded, they just might have made it off the island sooner, with less traumatic experiences under their belts. Piggy was truly a leader who had the potential to save the rest of the boys from themselves.