"Death of a Pig"

E.B. White is known for writing the heart-warming story of Charlotte’s web but in this short story we see another side of the author. Like Jason said you can really see the connection between farmer and animal in this story. It was early in the story when the author caught my attention with this line. “I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting.” It is as if the farmer feels a certain level of guilt for the death of his pig even though there may have been nothing he could do. The farmer begins by talking about the pigs as if they mean nothing to him like they are just animals for harvest. However, once one of his pigs get sick you can see how much he really cares about his animals.

While the farmer was caring for his ailing pig it was as if he was taking care of a child. He spoke of the pig as if it had its own thoughts and feelings, as if it had understood what his owner was trying to do for him. I have had enough pets in my life to know that animals are very intuitive. When E.B. White writes that the pig came out of his house to die I immediately thought about my own dogs and how it is said that they will sometimes go away when they die and just be alone. So a person has to wonder how much an animal truly understands. Another thing that caught my attention was that the farmer did not believe his pig was going to die until after the vet had came to try to help the pig. It was as if the acknowledgement from someone else that his pig was sick gave him the closer he needed.

To answer Jason’s question as to whether or not the farmer would have slaughtered the pig if it got better, I think he would have. I think that the farmer was so emotional about his pig being sick and dying because he sees the pig as a reflection of his work. He may have seen himself as a failure because he was unable to harvest a healthy pig. I can understand how a community could react to the death of just one pig because to them farming is their life. A lose of an animal isn’t only sad it is a loss of potential food or profit. It seemed like the famer in this story had a deeper connection with his animals because he talked about how he only went out and connected with other people every few weeks. To the farmer the lose of this pig could have been a big eye opener for him because now he knows that nothing is certain in life.