In my English Literature class we had an exciting assignment I never thought I would be able to do. We had to write a "Microtheme" a short paper on a topic from the book Lord of The Flies. The paper has to fit on a 7x4 card, and could only be size 10 font or larger. I could have hand written it, but no one would have been able to read it. I love my paper. I normally am the type of person to ramble on and on, you may have noticed. But I think I did a good job on this one. it could be any kind of paper. I chose to do a narrative that describes Ralph after he comes back to teh "real world" and the changes he wants to make. My paper will follow this posting. Keep in mind the short format and my normally lyrical writing style.
Remembering Piggy
He is crammed in front of the typewriter, his large hands look out of place rippling with lightening speed across the keyboard. He has a deadline to meet; this article is due any second. The editor breathing down his neck is the last thing he needs tonight. He suddenly bolts upright; his size now becomes apparent, his hair standing tall from having hands raked though it brushes the door frame as he snatches the article from the typewriters mechanical grip and dashes out of his office. “Here it is, the article on the protests,” he is already on his way back out the door to gather his things and head out into the night.
He has reached his home, a small flat in a fairly good neighborhood, he could afford better on his salary but he is more than happy with his current situation. As he enters his home he reaches out automatically to play the messages on his answering machine “Ralph, great job on that article, you really got into the head of those guys. I’ll make sure that I send anymore of these your way. Have a great night,” that was his editor. As Ralph passes into the kitchen the mirror catches his reflection, his large boxer’s body, so out of sync with the thickly framed glasses covering his eyes. If he were to remove those glasses one could see the gentleness that has settled there.
As he cooks himself a quick meal, the smell of the meat cooking flashes him back to another time, another place, long ago and far away. The pig roasting on a spit the crowd of underfed boys and Him, Ralph hates to think of that horrible nickname and that he was once stupid and young. He can’t believe that he doesn’t even know his name…Piggy. That is the only name he had. How cruel we were, he thinks, how idiotic. Could we not see that Piggy would have saved us with that bright mind? Piggy…Ralph hurriedly snatches the singed meat out of the pan and moves into his study to cram himself in front of yet another typewriter. But this is Ralph’s own space, his first apartment after living in the “Facility” as he liked to think of it. After being rescued from the island all the “Found Boys” were placed in a rehabilitation center and housed like animals until they could be reunited with families or deemed fit or unfit to enter the New World. That’s what it was called, the New World, rebuilt after the war into a world without borders.
Ralph had been the first of the boys to be released, he had thought that his father would come for him, but he found out later his father and his entire ship’s complement had been lost during the war. So, he had started his life new, fresh, and decided that he would write. He held on to every scrap of humanity he could and made it through college and got his job with a newspaper. He started with the classifieds and worked his way up, and now he was the go-to-guy for articles concerning the protests that were coming ever more frequently. He could empathize with these freedom fighters, but he had been through enough violence during his time on the island. He decided a while ago that he would never again be a party to violence. “We were just a pack of kids,” he mutters as he settles in to work. Not all of the boys had been as lucky as he was, many of them never left the “Facility.” Ralph went to visit them infrequently; it was just too hard to see those boys without seeing the one face he was looking for, Piggy.
The other boys would never admit it, but it was because of Piggy that they had all made it through as long as they did. He had been the voice of reason during all that madness. And yet, there was no one Ralph could tell his story to, no one had known his real name, so even if his family had made it through the war there was no way to find them. Ralph had made it his life’s work to tell the real story of Piggy, the brave and true, who had stood for all that was right on that godforsaken island. He poured the wisdom of Piggy onto the page in a manifesto that would hopefully find its way to the Governors. They could use a bit of Piggy’s insight. They thought that ruling with might and fervor was enough, even Ralph could understand this was not the best course of action. Jack had tried that, and where had it gotten him? He was locked in a solitary cell after trying to win control of the “Facility.” He thought he could regain power and with the help of his lieutenant, Roger, take over the world. In Ralph’s thinking, even if the “Found Boys” managed to escape, no one would listen to the savage rabble. Surely the world at large wasn’t that idiotic.
Democracy, free will, rights, and community were the ideas sprouting from the words flowing out of Ralph’s hands. Piggy would have wanted those things; he would have fought for them. This society was probably headed for disaster if someone didn’t make a change soon. There didn’t need to be so many laws, everything had a law. People of this ethnicity must live here, and work these jobs. People above a certain age must move into “Homes,” a similar construct to that of the “Facility.” Unwanted, useless citizens were crammed into buildings little better than warehouses.
Certain groups had begun to gather the force to start fighting the Governors, so that life could be free for all. Those rights that the old leaders had striven for, the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, had been long forgotten, and left to rot on shelves that none but the politically elite could even know existed. In his work as a reporter Ralph had come into contact with a man born into the elite but who wanted some semblance of a democracy instead of this semi-fascist-cum-communist whatever it was that was in power now. This man had risked his life to obtain for Ralph a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Fundamental Laws of England so the formulation of a new regime could be built on the back of the old.
That had been Piggy’s idea back on the island; he had wanted a society based on the one they had been born in. But his ideas had been ignored because they were unpopular. The boys had just wanted to play at being savages and hunt all day, so they did. And in the process burned all the vegetation off he island twice and they had ended up with three dead boys. They had told no one about the first little boy to go missing, only of Simon and Piggy. Ralph was guilty in both of their deaths, if he had just been stronger, if Jack hadn’t…But none of those thought could bring either of them back. So Ralph turned once again to the typewriter and continued to let the ideas flow. “No one person should have absolute power over another. We are all accountable for our own actions and for helping others. We must all share in the responsibilities of guiding and protecting the children of the earth, so that we may prevent a future world holocaust.” With these final words Ralph tugged the paper free. He gathered all the pages and placed them into the binder. It was time to take this to the Governors and the people. Changes must be made, and with Piggy’s wisdom, they could be made, Ralph was sure.
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