Lord of the Wonder

Two books, two characters, two different physical problems, one problem being faced, two different outcomes. That is the comparison between two famous young adult books; Wonder by RJ Palacio and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Two characters, Auggie Pullman from Wonder and Piggy from Lord of the Flies are characters much different to their counterparts. The reason being they are physically different. Piggy being fat and unfit and Auggie having a birth defect to his face. Because of this, they have the consequence of getting bullied a lot. Though at the end, they are treated differently and remembered differently. Auggie was a hero and was accepted in the community while Piggy fell to his death and the others in regretted not using him and treating better. So because of this my claim is that other characters should accept others for who they are and not judged and that it can lead to different consequences.

Now both Auggie and Piggy are similar in terms of having a physical feature different to the other characters in their respective books because of having a birth defect and being fat respectively. Because of this, they face the problem of being bullied. A lot. For example on page 24 in Lord of the Flies, some of the boys were doing a task and Piggy offered to help but then Ralph (another boy) replied strictly that he is “no good for a job like this”. Jack, another boy replies to Piggy, “We don’t want you”, “Three’s enough.” In the meantime just after that, light flashed on Piggy’s glasses and replied to the others, “I was with him when he found the conch. I was with him before anyone else was.” Though after that statement, the others did not pay any attention. This is a great example as this is scene happens early on and that this scene directly goes back to the claim as Piggy is not accepted to do a job because of being fat. Wonder shows a similar example to this too. On page 30 in Wonder, Palacio wrote: I started to follow her, but Julian cut right in front of me, which actually made me stumble backwards. “Oops, sorry about that!” Said Julian. But could I tell you from the way he looked at me that we wasn’t really sorry at all. Though Julian did a little thing to Auggie, this scene is a great comparison to the previous scene stated in Lord of the Flies. In the Wonder scene, Auggie gets tripped on purpose like Piggy getting told off on purpose in that scene. Both get targeted because of their physical differences to their counterparts. Also something both authors do in those scenes is that they use these sorts of scenes in the beginning to hint a problem in the relationship between characters in their books. In other words it means that the authors are giving a trace of evidence to the reader on how fierce the relationships can get. In both books, Piggy and Auggie do not get along with somebody in the book with Piggy not getting along with Jack at all and Auggie continuing to get troubled by Julian. So to conclude both books have similar scenes were a character does not get accepted into being themselves early on in the book.

Now there were hints of bullying on the character because of who they are. But authors like Golding and Palacio can pull of tricks of their sleeves. See even though Auggie and Piggy get bullied at the start, they have different ending to how they are treated. Let’s start with Piggy. Piggy is not accepted throughout the book even though he fought his heart out but fell to his death. In that scene Golding wrote: Ralph sat down and reflected. “Think” he said. What was the sensible thing to do?, there was no Piggy to talk sense. There was no solemn assembly for debate nor dignity in the group. Now though it is not the death scene of Piggy, it is a scene where one of the characters regret not using Piggy to his potential and not accepting who he was. Wonder has a direct scene that has the complete opposite turn around to how the Lord of the Flies ended. This was the emotional ending from one: Without further ado, this year I am very proud to award the Henry Ward Beecher award medal to the student whose quiet strength has carried up most hearts. “So will August Pullman please come up to receive this award.” This was a more jubilant ending to the book but most importantly this was the the most emotional scene as Auggie fought his heart out throughout the book and then has finally won hearts. This scene at the end is also completely opposite to the ending of the Lord of the Flies though the foundation came from the issue of bullying as I explained in the first paragraph. Coming back to the claim on how characters should accept each other, we need to realise even though both characters get bullied, there can be changes and those changes can lead to different consequences like the ones we see in these examples. From what we could see with the beginnings and ends we can clearly see that the way the others in the Lord of the Flies treated Piggy stayed constant throughout the book and the way the others in Wonder treated Auggie changed positively throughout the book. If it weren't for that change then Auggie would have not even won that award. Also something that can take into account when comparing the endings are the other characters. In Lord of the Flies, all of the other boys had the goal of just surviving and believed the strongest people are needed to do so also since they were stuck on a deserted island during World War II, there could have been a lack of education the boys had got so that is why Piggy was not accepted. In Wonder how ever I feel that most characters just accepted who Wonder was and because of their education experience even though they might have not accepted him at their first impression, they did accept him afterwards because they got used to it. So to finish of even though two characters faced the same problem, they way they are treated and accepted can impact the consequence at the end.

So in conclusion, other characters in books should accept other characters for who they are and their differences and the way they act with them can lead to different consequences. Positive or Negative.