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There had even been a pig astronaut. He had performed his assignment perfectly but died of a heart attack afterwards because they left him in his electric suit, sitting upright throughout his examination when naturally a hog should be on all fours. (CW 651)
n the iconic comedy series The Muppet Show, one recurring skit playfully parodied television programs and films inspired by space travel. Pigs in Space, probably the award-winning shows most popular segment, detailed the adventures of Captain Link Hogthrob, First Mate Piggy, and Dr. Julius Strangepork aboard the USS Swinetrek. Introduced in the second season, the hilarious send-up of space operas like Star Trek and Lost in Space earned Jim Henson and his crew high praise for creatively combining comedy and social commentary. The shows bizarre premise of pigs rocketing through the heavens could lead to the assumption that the concept was entirely original. More than a decade earlier, however, Flannery OConnor also imagined a pig astronaut. Only two sentences in Revelation are devoted to the stratosphere-sailing swine. Still, it is a crucial image. The pig astronaut is symbolic of Ruby Turpins entire persona, representing both the flawed character who enters the waiting room and the woman who comes to an epiphany when she exits the pig parlor in the storys closing paragraph.
OConnor understood pigs potential as a literary symbol. They have served a variety of roles and can be difficult to categorize. Theyre cute. Theyre dirty. Theyre good. Theyre bad. In other words, theyre a useful literary figure because, as several scholars have observed, pigs are just as ambiguous as human beings. Milo Kearney, in The Role of Swine Symbolism in Medieval Culture, believes the hog holds a special place in the rank of animal symbolism because it stands, more than any other beast, for mankind with its difficult antinomy of positive and negative characteristics (322). Dennis Slattery also calls attention to the pigs double nature-polluted but close to divinity (141). Anthony Di Renzo reaffirms this point in his analysis of Christian art and literature, pointing out that pigs are a puzzling and ambiguous symbol in Christian iconography, neither holy nor unholy. Perhaps they represent the polymorphously perverse side of human nature-that which is beastly, impish, shameless, self-satisfied, incorrigible, and...