The Coming of Age Story in "A Day No Pigs Would Die"

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.

From Naive to Snob to Educated

While it is not always clear what factors in people’s lives have molded them into who they are today, knowing those people for a long time, however, can give you an unimaginable insight into their lives. One such example of a character whose life story is so equivocal and definite it a good friend of mine named Johnhew Burns. I knew John while I lived in Newtown, Rhode Island. Making friends at the beginning of our freshman year, I spent a lot of time with John, giving me an insight into his life. Newtown was essentially a rich, mostly white people town.

This imposed a sort of model-driven, almost preppy atmosphere to which most students were expected to conform. Model-driven is meant to imply someone of high status or wealth in the community. With its standard of behavior, the Newtown community shaped John into its preppy definition of the model student, and later into the wiser, much stronger person he is recognized as today.

I didn’t exactly jump to fitting in when I first arrived, but John rapidly engaged the standard of acting. John participated in no after-school activities, rarely unheard of, but did play football, hockey, and lacrosse. If any sports dominated the Newtown community more, then it would have to be those three. This immediately welcomed him into the world of rich friends and high status at school. John’s family life was not uncommon from many military dependents today for through the duration of John’s sophomore year, his father became forcefully deployed to the Middle East.

Affecting Johners within the household, the lack of a patriarchal leader put John on a loser chain than before. His father had always been the stricter parent in the family, and now that he had faded from the picture, it meant a world of freedom for John to do as he pleased. This circumstance brought John closer to the people that he later realized to be the snobby preps with whom he simply did not wish to associate himself.

The mold impressed upon the students at Newtown High encouraged a stuck-up personality with the expenditure of much money. As John grew closer to those comrades of his from football, hockey, and lacrosse, he realized that these were also the same people that fit, or better yet, defined the Newtown profile. He witnessed the results of acting such a way, and it initially appealed to him, prompting him to change his lifestyle to resemble that of his peers. An example of a factor that helped John along on this journey became the way in which those already conforming to the Newtown profile extended their hands through invitations to various events and parties in a way that just couldn’t be turned down. This invitation into their society was gobbled up quickly, almost to the point of bighting the hand that was feeding. John now acted and spoke similarly to those elite Newtownians. An example of action and speech is the way that John, like this group, began to use extremely blatant sarcasm in the face of statements not even directed toward him.

John’s actions in general began to reflect a more preppy approach to life, as illustrated by his choice of clothing, cologne, and friends. As John adopted the Newtown system, the system adopted him, turned him into someone he wasn’t, and showed him a new side to life. As a result of his transformation, John became a product of something that he realized he didn’t want to be. It began to occur to him that while he was friends with the people who gave him answers in class and money at lunch, he had actually been losing those people that truly cared for him; his true friends. By becoming someone he wasn’t, John greatly impacted his relationships with those people closest to him. But by realizing his mistake in becoming the definition of the Newtown prep that he wasn’t, he became able to correct his fault. For this, John is a much stronger person today, while less susceptible to the more devious factors of life.