Le Porc

The Pig
In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn't read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn't puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"
"They want my bacon slice by slice"
To sell at a tremendous price!"
They want my tender juicy chops"
To put in all the butcher's shops!"
They want my pork to make a roast"
And that's the part'll cost the most!"
They want my sausages in strings!"
They even want my chitterlings!"
The butcher's shop! The carving knife!"
That is the reason for my life!"
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let's not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
lowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,"
I had a fairly powerful hunch"
That he might have me for his lunch."
And so, because I feared the worst,"
I thought I'd better eat him first."
Roald Dahl

Childish, inane, silly, deep, chilling. Roald Dahl in addition to being a children's writer, wrote horror stories. I remember reading one of his collections. The first short story of that collection was about an old woman who feeds a travel weary man - with food laced with cyanide, and then stuffs him. It was in my hostel room late into the night, so no points for guessing what I was thinking the next couple of times I ate in the mess.

Pig
Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather,
Ride, follow the fox if you can!
But, for pleasure and profit together,
Allow me the hunting of Man--
The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul
To its ruin--the hunting of Man.
Rudyard Kipling

What does this poem mean? Is he speaking from the perspective of the pig?

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
George Orwell (Closing lines, Animal Farm)

Surprisingly, I have never read the book. My father used to tell me the story of this book when I was young and used to finish it off with these lines. I have never read Clockwork Orange or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest. But, thanks to my father I know them in excruciating detail. I did see the movies though. Clockwork Orange is quite shocking, I never could get past the gore and understand the point it was trying to make.
Well anyway, if you don't know the story, Animal Farm is about a bunch of animals in a farm run by a farmer. The animals protest about the farmer 'exploiting' them, and hence overthrow him and take over. The pigs take up the helm under the promise of equality. But, there is none. It's the old system in a new form. This is a parallel to the Bolshevik Revolution of the 1917 when the Romanovs were over thrown by the Communists headed by Lenin. Lenin and then Stalin turn out to be just as despotic as the Tsars. In the book the pigs grow increasingly decadent over time and behave exactly like the farmer did - actually worse. They even decide to form an alliance with the farmer in the end. While the pigs are negotiating with him in the farmhouse, the other animals look in through the window and wonder... Doesn't this remind one of this someone's effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the world? - by force, how hypocritic is that, freedom through violence. Sadly, it's the people that lose. 'Democracy' is just as bad as 'Socialism' if used as an excuse by a select few to further their agenda.