"Death of a Pig"

For quite a few years, I have been friends with a farmer, his name is Karl. Karl is also a pig farmer like our author E. B. White. Never have I ever heard Karl say that he loved his pigs, unless he was eating them. I've never noticed a bond between him and his pigs (but I did get to name one, his name was HormelJ) so I never thought a farmer could ever feel attached to his animals, especially those bred to be slaughtered. White describes in great detail how his poor pig died, from just not being hungry to lower stomach pains in his poor belly, the pig seemed to go through quite the fit of suffering. I didn't really see this as an essay; it was much more interesting than that. I viewed this reading as a chapter from a really good book; I didn't want to put it down. This story doesn't start out like any other, it begins with the ending, and this caught me by surprise! So I knew the ending, why should I keep going? Because I wanted to find out how the pig died, duh! White explains the unintentional – I think – bond between him and this pig, this huge pig that was bred to be killed, and how it affected him and his town when it died! Absolutely breathtaking, it really shows how some people, even though they don’t look it, can care deeply about something that others may not. A sentence in particular that stuck out to me was, “The loss we felt was not the loss of a pig,” makes me think, did he think of this pig as a family member? The same way we consider out cats and dogs as a member of the family? White also talks about how the pigpen was everything a pig could ever want. Was this intentional, this pig oasis? We may not know, but we do know that White was really torn apart from this pig’s death, along with the town. I really enjoyed that his fellow neighbors mourned with him, letting him know that he wasn't alone.