“Go on, squeal like a pig”

“Go on, squeal like a pig” is both a bullying command and a phrase that returns in Oskar’s imagined revenge. Jonny first uses it to make Oskar perform his humiliation; later, Oskar pictures Jonny screaming in the same animal terms. The reversal gives the expression its force: the words begin as an instrument of control and return as part of a fantasy in which the roles have changed.

The command as humiliation

Jonny delivers the taunt while Oskar is trapped in a humiliating situation. He tells Oskar that he will have to open the lid if he needs to shit, then orders him to squeal. The command is not merely an insult: it makes Oskar enact the comparison himself, turning the pig simile into a public performance. Jonny and Micke laugh as Oskar obeys, so the taunt’s immediate effect is reinforced by their shared amusement.

The wording combines an imperative with an animal comparison. “Go on” presses Oskar to continue, while “squeal like a pig” defines the sound he is expected to make. Jonny’s later demand, “Fucking pig, go on, squeal some more,” repeats the command and extends the humiliation. The repetition leaves Oskar little room to control the scene’s terms: even his voice is directed by the boys who have cornered him.

Oskar’s forced performance

Oskar squeals because he has learned that doing so may sometimes end the punishment. He is especially afraid that the boys will force his hand out of his pants and discover his secret. His response is therefore tactical as well as involuntary: he tries to satisfy the demand before the boys turn to a more exposing form of punishment. The scene shows how bullying can make compliance feel like the least dangerous available choice without making it voluntary in any meaningful sense.

He performs the command with his whole body. Oskar wrinkles his nose like a pig, grunts, squeals, shuts his eyes, and clenches his hands until his nails dig into his palms. The bodily detail makes the taunt more than a verbal exchange: Jonny’s words dictate Oskar’s sounds and gestures, while Oskar’s fear determines how intensely he carries them out. He keeps going until he tastes something strange in his mouth, then opens his eyes and finds that the boys have gone. Their departure ends the immediate ordeal, but it does not undo the forced performance that has just taken place.

The phrase returns as reversal

The pig image returns when Oskar imagines himself as the Murderer taking revenge on Jonny. In that scene Jonny is a rotting fallen tree, and Oskar strikes it as if attacking his tormentor. The narration describes Jonny as screaming like a pig. The earlier command thus comes back with its positions reversed: the boy who ordered Oskar to squeal is now represented as the one making the sound.

The revenge scene explicitly connects Oskar’s imagined violence to particular humiliations. The Murderer’s rationale includes, “One stab for what you did to me in the bathroom today.” The reference makes the earlier bullying part of the imagined accounting, rather than presenting the attack as detached from their history. Other grievances are named as well, including being tricked into playing knuckle poker and Jonny’s insults. The repeated pig image gathers this history into a single reversal of power: Oskar no longer performs the sound at Jonny’s direction; in the fantasy, Jonny is made to suffer it.

The distinction between imagined violence and physical action matters. Oskar hacks at a fallen tree that represents Jonny; the account’s bodily violence belongs to the fantasy enacted through that substitute. At the end, Oskar notices that his hand has been cut and tastes the blood on it, which the narration identifies as Jonny’s in the imagined scene. The phrase therefore links the actual coercion of the bathroom episode to an elaborate revenge fantasy, without making the fantasy itself an actual killing. Its recurrence records the change in Oskar’s imagined position: from a child forced to squeal for his tormentors to the figure who imagines Jonny helpless beneath his blows.