A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck

First published: 1972

Type of work: Domestic realism

Themes: Coming-of-age, death, jobs and work, family, and animals

Time of work: The late 1930’s and early 1940’s

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: A farm near Learning, Vermont

Principal Characters:

• Robert Peck, an adolescent boy who learns to handle the farming chores for his Shaker family
• Haven Peck, his father, a farmer and a slaughterer of pigs
• Lucy Peck, his mother, a hardworking and supportive farm wife
• Aunt Carrie, her oldest sister, unmarried, who lives with the Pecks
• Benjamin Franklin Tanner, their neighbor, an excellent farmer who encourages Robert as he matures
• Aunt Matty, (
• Martha Plover, ), Lucy Peck’s closest friend, who unsuccessfully tries to teach English to Robert

The Story

Growing up on a farm in Vermont, twelve-year-old Robert Peck helps his father, Haven, with chores and learns the Shaker values of simplicity, neighborliness, and hard work. Through raising a pig, the boy is prepared for the responsibilities of running the farm and for the death of his father a few months after Robert’s thirteenth birthday.

Robert is given a newborn pig by his neighbor, Ben Tanner, in thanks for helping a cow deliver one of her twin calves and for ripping a life-threatening goiter from the cow’s throat. The first animal the boy has ever owned, Pinky becomes a beloved companion as together they wander through the countryside around the family farm. They encounter death as part of the cycle of nature when they watch a crow kill a bullfrog and, later, a hawk kill a rabbit for food.

Family and neighbors teach Robert an acceptance of human weaknesses and, at the same time, an understanding of manners and standards for mature adult behavior. Aunt Matty, his mother’s close friend, who is not literally his aunt, unsuccessfully tries to teach him correct grammar and speech by showing him how to diagram a sentence. Haven Peck takes his son with him one rainy night to a graveyard, where Sebring Hillman is digging up the grave of a dead Peck relative so that the man can recover a baby’s coffin and acknowledge that he is the father of the illegitimate child. Robert’s father protects the sanctity of his relative’s coffin even as he helps Hillman return to the kitchen where his wife awaits him. Later, Robert learns of a woman’s sexual needs and of the necessity for life to continue after the death of a family member. Widow Bascom takes in a hired man, Ira Long, and scandalous, joyous laughter is heard coming from her house in the dark of night.

The novel’s moment of greatest pride for Robert and Pinky is the county fair at Rutland. The boy is allowed to accompany the Tanners to the fair in order to show the matched Holsteins, Bob and Bib, that he helped deliver. He also enters Pinky in a contest for animals raised by children, and the pet is awarded a blue ribbon for best-behaved pig. Robert obeys his parents by behaving very politely with the Tanners, but he never tells his mother and father that he throws up on the shoes of the judge who is giving Pinky her ribbon.

Robert learns of the harshness of death on a farm when Ira Long’s dog is killed in an attempt to train her to hunt weasels, then later when Pinky must be slaughtered because she is barren. The father and son grow closer as they share the painful, but necessary, task of killing a loved animal that is unproductive.

Haven Peck tells his son that he knows he will die after the winter and that the boy must learn to become the man in the family. In May, Robert finds his father dead in the barn. He calmly handles the funeral arrangements, tells his father good-bye at the grave, then moves on to complete the farm chores that await him.

Context

A Day No Pigs Would Die is Peck’s first novel and his most strongly autobiographical work. Although the book is fiction, the author names and bases his central characters on himself as a boy and on his parents. The book is dedicated to Peck’s father, who slaughtered pigs for a living.

This novel established Peck’s writing style as one of gritty realism: He does not hesitate to describe vividly many of the gory or earthy aspects of farm life. At the same time, Peck’s characters embody simple qualities of compassion, gentleness, and sensitivity. The matter-of-fact blending of such seemingly disparate traits produces a novel in which humor and tragedy, beauty and cruelty, are shown to be necessary ingredients that must be combined in a healthy, holistic understanding of life.

The one scene that most clearly depicts Peck’s realistic blend of brutality and compassion is the slaughter of the pet pig, Pinky, by the father and son. The author presents a pig that, like Wilbur in E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952), is loved by a child and honored at a county fair. Unlike Wilbur, however, Pinky does not idyllically spend the rest of her years in a cozy barn, but instead must be killed to help provide for the economic stability of a farm family. In the midst of his intense grief, the boy who loves this pig feels a mixture of hate and love for his father, who demanded the slaughtering of the pig, and begins to mature toward acceptance of the diverse qualities that will continue to be a part of the reality that is farm life.