AUTHOR'S NOTE:
My scene takes place when the boys come back from a failed hunting expedition and reenact the way they cornered the pig and tried to kill it. I had the choice in my English class to decide whether to write an analytical essay about Lord of the Flies or do the creative alternative which was to "write a "mutated" version of the story—a might-have-been, based on some change of circumstance, a difference in the characters who are present, or even a difference in setting." I, obviously, chose to do the creative alternative and I hope you guys enjoy the outcome.
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"They got his arms and legs. Ralph, carried away by a sudden thick excitement, grabbed Eric's spear and jabbed at Robert with it.
"Kill him! Kill him!"
All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife. Behind him was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last moment of a dance or a hunt.
"Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!"
Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.
Jack's arm came down; the heaving circle cheered. . ." (Golding 115-16).
Ralph was the first of the boys to snap out of the blood-thirsty trance. He looked down where Robert lay. His eyes that were filled with fear just mere moments ago were completely and utterly devoid of any and all emotion. His skin, his tanned skin that he was so eager to get his hands on, was now covered in a red coating. The rustic smell of blood permeated the air and Ralph was horrified.
". . . Jack . . . what have you done?" he said in a soft whisper, almost as if he spoke too loud, he would wake the boy lying at his feet.
The question, though uttered in a soft voice, broke through the rest of the boys' high from the rush of the kill. The youngest of the circle screamed. His scream disturbed the resting birds and with a snap of their wings, they were airborne and left nothing in their place but a few ruffled feathers and the echoes of terrified screeches. The young boy's screams mixed with the echoing cries and when both sounds descended into silence, the lack of noise made the situation rise into a whole new level of uneasiness.
Time passed around the stunned group. They stared at each other for what seemed like years but couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes. Finally, one boy had the courage, or maybe it was the audacity, to break the silence.
"What do we do?" he said while looking at Ralph for some sort of direction, or reassurance, or comment, or even anger; anything but the horrified stare that seemed to be placed on each of the boys' faces.
Taking the lead from the boy who spoke, the rest of the group, including Jack, turned their attention from the dead boy to their elected leader. Ralph stared back at the rest of his group. His expression switched from horror, to incredulity, to resentment, to sadness, and to a million different emotions before he chose to stick with mixture of disbelief and anger. He directed his rage towards the individual who had delivered the final blow.
"What have you done?!" he seethed. His eyes flashed with wild emotion so fierce that it made all of the boys take a step back. They became scared, but for a completely different reason than what had just transpired in the past few minutes. They were now scared of their leader. Their leader, who seemed to be always calm and collected, was now furious.
Jack regained his bearings after a couple of seconds and stepped up to defend his actions.
"It was an accident! It was just a game!"
If possible, Ralph looked even more furious at this explanation.
"Games do not get people killed, or have you already forgotten that?" As Ralph said this, his face transitioned into a look of condescending.
After seeing that patronizing expression on his nemesis, something inside of Jack snapped. He picked up a rock by his feet and aimed it at the boy with fair hair.
"Don't make me sound like I don't know anything," he huffed. The anger inside of Jack screamed to be released. It screamed at him to let go of all of his inhibitions and show this pretty-boy what it meant to be a leader. It screamed at him to show everyone present that he was the better leader, that he knew what he was doing, that he wasn't going to just talk and talk and talk, that he was actually the better candidate to lead the boys into greatness.
"When it comes to being civilized, you don't seem to know anything," Ralph replied.
"What did you expect to come out of this little game of yours? Huh? Did you actually expect for you to be able to restrain yourself? Or did you expect us to be able to look past your ability to be able to kill a boy with no remorse?"
Jack's face heated up with embarrassment at Ralph's accusations, but at the same time his fury at being talked down at rose to a whole new level. His fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly to stop himself from mauling the boy across from him with his fists, but Ralph seemed to take no notice to the boy's actions.
"I bet you did, didn't you?"
Clench, unclench
"You expected us to forgive you for your actions."
Clench, unclench
"You thought that if you seemed sorry enough that we would be able to excuse you from you crimes."
Clench, unclench
"I bet you thought that killing someone would show how strong you are and that we would just follow you blindly."
Clench, unclench
"Am I wrong?"
Without knowing it, during his speech, Ralph got closer and closer to Jack and now he was a breath away from touching the boy. Nose-to-nose, the boys stared at each other. They forgot about the young boys staring at the match between them with fear. They forgot about the reason they were even fighting. They forgot about poor, dead Robert who was still lying on the ground just a few feet away from them.
"What? Don't think you need to explain yourself? You think you're so high and mighty that yo-," Ralph was cut off from his speech as Jack finally let himself let go of his anger. He had swung his fist and punched Ralph straight across his face. Surprised by being struck so suddenly and by the strength of the punch, Ralph fell backwards bumping into one of the other boys who just received the courage to try and break the two from their argument.
Ralph shot right up from his position on the floor and ran towards his attacker. With a savage cry, he ran forward and tackled Jack. The pair tumbled backwards into the vegetation behind them and continued to fall down the hill that was hidden from sight.
The other boys stood still, not knowing what to do. They listened to the sounds of the fight as the two other boys struggled to gain the upper hand against each other while falling down the steep hill. They stood there listening until the sound of a pained scream reverberated from where the boys were hidden. That one sound cause pandemonium and the boys struggled to see the cause of that wounded noise.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE:
In the original plot, the boy they used as the pig, Robert, is a little beaten but otherwise unharmed. In my plot, Robert is killed. The killing of Robert signifies the speeding up of the downward spiral into savagery. Robert's death allows something inside of the two leader figures to snap and they end up fighting instead of trying to fix the situation. Their inability to think right despite the care that the situation demands represents the complete loss of civility and their loss of sympathy over a horrifying event.
I hope you guys enjoyed this little plot twist. It was extremely amazing to change something from a story as famous as Golding's incredible piece of literature. I actually found that it was easy to stay true to Golding's way of writing and to keep the boys in character. Okay, alright, that was a lie. Ralph and Jack are a little OOC, but I think I didn't stray too far from Golding's ideas. At least I hope not. . . . Please forgive any grammar/spelling mistakes if I had any at all. I reviewed this piece so many times fixing it and it's hard to spot mistakes when you've been looking at the same thing for an insane amount of time. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my little piece of writing and reviews are more than welcome!