First Things First…
It’s been fun to reread this first volume of Barker’s short stories and remember that I really liked them all. As far as I recall, this one is probably middle of the pack among the six stories, but when the bar is so high, there’s nothing wrong with that.
3 Things I Like
3. Where’s the Governor?
I assume the Governor oversees the institution. Every time he’s mentioned, it’s to say he’s not there. He’s not there after Redman gets hired, so Redman never gets to meet him, and his office door is always locked. No one seems to know where he is, either. It’s suggested he might be at meetings to try to get more funding, or university seminars.
The one thing that’s clear is he’s conspicuous by his absence.
I figured he’d show up toward the end of the story as a villain. Instead, when Redman breaks into his office to use the phone after rescuing Lacey, he finds the Governor dead, with his heart eaten out.
This is one of the most shocking moments of the story. And it’s a fitting payoff to this mystery, which had been one of numerous clues all along that something sinister was going on.
2. A Pig’s Point of View
This is where we first discover for certain that the sow is eating people…
“She judged the rhythm of the days, and with their progression her desires grew. She knew that the time for stale slops in a trough was past. Other appetites had taken the place of those piggy pleasures.”
I’m still not 100% convinced everything the boys and Leverthal thought was happening with the sow was real. Particularly the idea that Hennessey was speaking through her.
But whether real or imagined, it’s fun to get her perspective and to give her a human-like personality. Especially because it’s so perverse.
It’s not strictly her appetites—which seem a mixture of culinary and sexual—that we get her thoughts on, though. There’s also her survival instinct, which becomes apparent when she discovers Redman might cause problems for her…
“She remembered the confrontation across the wall, the way he’d stared at her as though she was a zoological specimen. So that was her enemy, that old man. She’d have him. Oh yes.”
1. Myth-making
As I already said, I’m not sure if everything involving the worship of the sow is real. I think Redman might have the right idea…
“It wasn’t too difficult to understand how the boys could have made a mythology of that atrocity: inventing hymns to it, attending upon the pig like a god. The candles, the reverence, the intended sacrifice of Lacey: it was evidence of sickness, but it was not more strange than a thousand other customs of faith.”
Now, he also wonders how Leverthal could be a part of it. It makes more sense to him when she reveals that she and Hennessey had an intimate relationship.
But even that—maybe Hennessey was just so charismatic that he could make Leverthal and the boys all believe this would work. And they turned the sow into a goddess because he persuaded them to before he killed himself.
If they all fell under Hennessey’s spell, I could see that being the case. I’m not sure how killing himself in her sty and being eaten by her would lead to his spirit inhabiting her body. They never mention a ceremony or ritual of transference.
I prefer the interpretation that it’s all group delusion and hysteria. In a way, it’s scarier because it’s actually realistic that these impressionable people could believe something like this and then commit the atrocities they felt were justified.
On the other hand, having a giant sow with real human emotions and thoughts—and even speech—would also be terrifying. So I enjoy the ambiguity.
Redman isn’t convinced, either. When the sty catches fire and the sow gets caught in it, he notices…
“Even now, in extremis, the pig was still a pig. No miracles here: no speaking, or pleading, in tongues. The animal panicked as the blaze surrounded her, cornering her stamping bulk and licking at her flanks…
“Her voice was a pig’s voice, her complaints a pig’s complaints.”
And at the end, when Lacey stabs Redman in the back and has him strung up, it seems as if he’ll be food for the sow. Instead, Lacey begins chomping on Redman himself. It seems like he’s trying to enact his own transformation.
Again, this speaks way more to mental illness and the ability to be coerced into believing something so askew of normal human behavior.
It’s horrific, and ambiguous, but I couldn’t look away.
1 Thing I’m Mixed On
1. Ulterior Motives?
Redman had been looking out for Lacey ever since his first visit, when he witnessed Lacey get attacked—and he saw Leverthal not give any consequences to the attackers or even acknowledge that she saw who attacked him.
I thought it was just his cop instinct to protect. He promises Lacey he won’t be harmed, and he does his best to keep that promise.
Eventually, Leverthal calls him out for putting so much time and effort into just one boy when there are so many there. But this thought from Redman seems to come from nowhere…
“Was there something in him that wanted Thomas Lacey naked beside him? Wasn’t that the sub-text of Leverthal’s remark? Even now, running uncertainly towards the lights, all he could think of was the boy’s eyes, huge and demanding, looking deep into his.”
I guess it makes sense. He said early in the story that he was forced out of the field, which is why he left the force. He never explained what happened. Could it have been because someone found out he’s gay?
Maybe it’s a way to justify why he meets such a horrific end—his motivations for being in this place with young boys weren’t so noble to begin with. That would be a cynical explanation, but it wouldn’t be out of place. It just feels shoehorned in.
1 Thing I Don’t Like
1. “Pig”
Redman is referred to as a pig a few times in the beginning of the story because he used to be a cop. And the story has a lot to do with a giant pig. I get that. But his previous line of work doesn’t make much difference in the end.
In a place with these criminal boys, it seemed like being an ex-cop would work against him. He’s even a little concerned with what the boys have been told about him before he starts.
But when he’s strung up at the end, with Lacey cannibalizing him, it’s not because he’s a “pig.” It’s because he was stupid enough to get involved and didn’t quit in his first few days when it was clear this place was bad news.
Tim Matassa
