A Day No Pigs Would Die is a novel written by Robert Newton Peck that shows exactly this. How Robert acted throughout the novel as a child, how he acted as he matured, and how he acted as an adult is very clearly seen in this novel and will be portrayed in this essay.
Robert acts very childish towards the first half of the novel. He is always asking questions and is very sensitive. One example of this would be when Robert decided to leave school because somebody made fun of him at recess. “I should have been in school that April day. But instead I was up on the ridge near the old spar mine above our farm, whipping the gray trunk of a rock maple with a dead stick, and hating Edward Thatcher. During recess, he’d pointed at my clothes and made sport of them.”(Robert Newton Peck, A Day No Pigs Would Die, 3) Robert wound up being seriously injured from this childish mistake of his. Robert learned a good lesson from this happening. A few other small incidences put together with this occurrence made Robert realize that he wasn’t going to be a child forever. Robert would have to learn to care for himself and his personal belongings like his best friend Pinky. Pinky was a pig that was given to him by Mr. Tanner as a thank you gift for his help with the birthing of Mr. Tanner’s calf. Robert was very happy to receive Pinky and the two were immediately attracted to each other. This is how Robert acts as a young child and how he has learned to take some responsibility for his actions. Robert matures with great courage as the novel progresses.
As the novel progresses, Robert matures more and more along every step of the journey. He learns to cope with different situations and is forced to become a man in a very short period of time. An example of Robert maturing is when he has to accompany his father to the cemetery in town to find their neighbor who is digging up a grave. Robert remains very calm and self contained when he first sees his neighbor digging this grave up. “We got to Learning, and the town was all asleep in the rain. We rounded the corner at the General Store and went toward Meeting. There was no lantern aglow in the churchyard. But we could hear his shovel hitting wood.” (Peck 72) Had Robert been younger when he witnessed this action of desecration, he would not have accepted this thought as rationally as he did. Robert helped with the digging and removal of the coffin from the ground and was grateful in the end that he had been forced to accompany his father in the first place. Before Rob visited Rutland, he heard Mrs. Bascom and Ira Long giggling in the dark. “I told her (Pinky) about Widow Bascom and Ira Long, much as I knew. And how they giggled together in the dark.” (Peck 88) Robert was mature enough not to spread the word of this happening to everyone in the town. He understood what was happening and decided that that was their business and that he would stay out of it. Judging by Robert’s decision in this case, it is to be believed that he has learned to mind his own business. As Robert has progressively matured so far in this novel, A Day No Pigs Would Die, the author has shown the audience that maturity can sometimes happen in a very short period of time. Robert begins to become a man as the novel forms and takes shape.
As an adult, Robert is forced to accept many events that happen. Robert was put in a position where he had to make some hard decisions. Robert loved his pet pig Pinky, but was very upset when his father said that Pinky had to be slaughtered. “When he turned round to me, his face was sober. ‘Rob, let’s get it done.’ I didn’t ask what. I just knew.” (Peck 135) Robert’s father was a very nice, hard working man that was forced to kill Pinky because the family needed food to eat, and the only thing that they could get a lot of food from was Pinky. Father said that Pinky ate too much, and was too big to keep as a pet anymore. Robert was upset at his father’s decision to kill Pinky, but understood that what has to be done, has to be done. Another event of this type was when Robert was forced to dig his own father’s grave. “I dug a grave in the family plot in our orchard.” (Peck 143) This example is just one of many that show how Robert matures so much throughout the novel. At first he was very childish and self-centered, then, he began to mature and become a man. He was then mostly matured and was now forced to face the world as a man.
Robert was very childish at first, but over the course of the novel, he matures and eventually becomes a man. A point in this novel that was greatly enjoyed by myself was when Robert first received Pinky, because Rob was so excited that he finally owned something of his own. It was very nice to see how the two were instantly attracted to each other. Maturing is a very difficult and long process to go through, but staring in straight in the face like Robert did takes a lot of courage and strength.
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