Explain the symbolism of the pig in the story "A Shocking Accident"?

The pig could be said to symbolize the fundamental absurdity of death. Whichever way we eventually depart from this world, whether it's gently in our sleep one night, or overcome by toxic plumes of smoke while saving desperate waifs from a burning orphanage, or even being crushed by a falling pig, we are all going to go some day. Death is absurd and meaningless, irrespective of how it eventually happens.
But too many of us are unwilling to face up to this unpleasant fact of life. That's why we try to convince ourselves that some deaths are better than others. Regarding certain deaths as being "good" becomes a useful strategy of evasion, a way of avoiding a stark confrontation with the truth of our inevitable demise. This attitude is all pervasive in society and is one that Jerome has to deal with for the rest of his life. The death of his father, crushed by a pig falling from a balcony, is neither more nor less absurd than any other kind of death. But society, in its refusal to deal with the fundamental fact of human mortality, says that there's something especially ridiculous about the manner of such a demise.