How Irving Creates A Portrait Of Sneed As More And More Pig

In the memoir â€Å"Trying to save Piggy Sneed,† John Irving recounts how his grandmother’s kindness towards a retarded garbage collector, Sneed, inspired him to become a writer. One of the key aspects of the memoir is how Irving creates a portrait of Sneed as more and more pig-like. The effect of this portrait is to make readers believe, by the end of the memoir, that Sneed is a pig. Irving starts the memoir with the statement that all memoirs are partially made-up, and as such, â€Å"Trying to save Piggy Sneed,† too, has false components. He uses his imagination throughout the memoir to supplement his memory and to alter facts about Sneed, so as to create a false and cruel picture of him. My aim is to analyze how Irving uses his imagination to characterize Sneed and answer why does he, even as an adult, insist on being abusive to this innocent man? In paragraph 8, Irving emphasizes that Sneed lived with his pigs, imagining that â€Å"his pigs would crowd aroun d him for warmth.† He associates Sneed’s smell and look with his pig-like qualities. But, although Sneed smelled and looked awful, this alone is not conclusive. Sneed was poor and retarded and couldn’t talk, so the only thing he could do for a living was collect garbage and keep some pigs, work in which it is not easy to maintain hygiene. Because his barn was small, Sneed had to remain close to his pigs, which was the reason he looked and smelled awful, rather than a willingness to live like a pig, as Irving describes.