Piggy's Diary

Objective: Write a journal entry looking at the incident in the point of view of the character; it should fully capture the character’s voice.

I need him to be strong. His strength will keep us together, but sadly he is crumbling, and so are we. Ralph, God bless him, thinks with his heart, and not with his mind, and that is weakening him. He needs to think of the future, and not dwell on the past. The past is painful; Simon’s death was…an accident. So young and killed so brutally…NO, I mustn’t think like this! I need to put this behind me, we all do. It was an accident, people make mistakes. We just need to learn from our mistakes, that’s all. Maybe Simon was pretending to be the beast and people fell for it? Yeah, that’s probably true. We’re all civilized here, we got the conch.
If Ralph just blew on that conch, I know that it will bring the two groups closer together. I would do it myself, but no one seems to care when I got the conch. I have a right to speak damn it! Maybe if people listened to me, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. Nobody listens to me, except Ralph. Ralph cares for me, I can tell. I care for him too, for he has a kind heart. He is strong as long as he has support, and when he lost his support, he lost his strength. But he’s got the conch, if he just used it, he would get support. The conch is all he needs, the conch is the only thing that Jack and his savages don’t have. Ralph has been like a father to most of the littulns, and it’s clear that he needs a father like figure of his own. I saw the way he rocked to and fro like a child, and the way he cradled that rock; he needs someone. I tried to be that someone, but he pushed my hand away. He thinks he doesn’t need me.
He came to me flushed and referred to Simon’s death as murder. It wasn’t murder, it couldn’t be murder. How can murder happen on the island while we still got the conch? It was an accident, it has to be. It was a mistake, a tragic mistake nevertheless. He needs to forget about it, he needs to stop thinking about it, like I did. What good will it do us if we think about the murder, I mean death, of our poor friend Simon? He needs to forget and come up with a way to prevent another death. The others are in desperate need of order, and need some sort of guidelines. No one should worry about me, I can set up rules for myself. If he just called an assembly, I know people would come. But when I mentioned it to him, he laughed in my face. I know he is hiding his fear with laughter, we all do, but reestablishing order is not a laughing matter. I know that if he just blew that conch, somehow it would all be better. If he blew that conch, everything would be normal again, not as normal as our past lives, but as normal as it gets on this island.
Oh, how I miss my past life. I miss my auntie, she cares. No one cares about my asthma, not even Ralph. I know that if my Auntie was here, she would care. She would pamper me, and let me rest, because I matter to her. I don’t think I matter to anyone here, and it hurts. I have never been anywhere where I haven’t been loved or liked. Back home, I was loved by my Auntie, but not necessarily liked by the neighborhood kids, but that was okay, as long as I had my Auntie’s love. I need someone to acknowledge my importance here; I mean if it wasn’t for my glasses, the fire would’ve never been lit. Urgh, why am I thinking about this now, I shouldn’t think of things that disturb me. I need to remain strong, if not for my sake, for Ralph’s. Ralph needs me more than he thinks he does.
Piggy

By Samar Al Ansari
Grade 11.5
Sep. 27, ‘04