What is ironic about Piggy's glasses in Lord of the Flies by William Golding?

Unfortunately for him,is the character in
bythat everyone loves to hate. Whenfirst meets Piggy, he puts up with
Piggy's chatter and questions, but as soon as he can, Ralph tries to get away from him. While
the little ones answer Piggy's questions, they do not even consider voting for him as their
leader--despite the fact that "what intelligence had been shown [on the island so far] was
traceable to Piggy."literally hates Piggy from the first moment Piggy opens his mouth to
speak. From the beginning, Piggy is on the outside of the circle of boys. 

This is probably due to the fact that Piggy is such an unappealing physical presence.
He is distinctly overweight, wears a windbreaker (a rather "sissy" thing to wear in
this crowd, apparently), has asthma, and wears thick glasses. These are schoolboys, remember,
and there is nothing much crueler than a bunch of kids who find something to pick on in a person
they may not even know. This is what happens to Piggy with Ralph and ; however, with Jack things
are different. Jack clearly sees Piggy as a threat to his (Jack's) leadership and wants to shut
him up from the outset. 

When the boys vote for thier leader, Piggy does not
vote for either Jack or Ralph, seeming to understand that neither of them is a particularly good
leader. Jack has already demonstrated that he is a poor leader by having to coerce his choir to
vote for him. Ralph takes a cheap shot at Piggy by revealing his nickname, the one thing he
asked Ralph not to do. In short, Piggy is the most intelligent boy on the island because he
understands these things before anyone else does. 

So, no one wants Piggy on
their team, so to speak. At meetings he tries to follow the rules of the conch but is shut down
and stifled at every turn. When the boys decide to make a small fire on the mountain, everyone
races off, leaving the asthmatic Piggy to makes his way alone and at his own pace. The boys
amass a huge pile of wood and then stand there, embarrassed because they have no way to light
the fire. They look around but see nothing to use.

A
little air was moving over the mountain. Piggy came with it, in shorts and shirt, laboring
cautiously out of the forest with the evening sunlight gleaming from his glasses. He held the
conch under his arm.

Almost immediately he is mauled and
his glasses ripped off of his face so they can make a fire. 

The greatis that
no one needs or wants Piggy's physical presence, his intellect, or his commitment to the rules
(as demonstrated by his understanding of and care for the conch). Nevertheless, it is his
glasses which hold the power of life and death on this island, for fire has the power to save
and destroy. Piggy, the boy everyone loves to hate, has the absolute key to life and death on
the island: not intelligence, not order and discipline, but fire.