A Boy Named Simon

Peering ahead through the dense dark vines, Kara checked to make sure that no one had discovered her special secret. Clambering through the clumps of bushes she emerged on a place that was both beautiful and deadly.

Kara’s secret space was a diminutive platform surrounded on all sides but one by a steep drop to the roaring sea. The sea was raging tonight. Just like the emotions tumbling inside of her. Sadness. Horror. Pain. Loss. They were all there careering around inside her like a merry go round gone rogue. And here, on the square platform was where she let it all out. Here were the thoughts that she pushed to the back of her mind during the day.The thoughts that hurt too much to think about without the evidence being seen on her face.

The moon in its full creamy form came out from behind the shreds of cloud. Each beam cast shadows that were watching, waiting to transform its self into a demon or hobgoblin ready to pounce.

Staring out into the rolling mass that was the ocean. Kara composed letters to her family-well, not exactly her family. Her blood parents emotionally deserted her almost as soon as she was born, foisting her onto countless nannies and then as she grew older onto governesses and then as she grew even older into boarding school hell. Her only friend in the household was Sarah, the big, bustling, motherly figure with four children of her own. Sarah’s only daughter, Rose, was the same age as Kara and they grew up together. Laughing together. Playing together. Those were the good times, the times when Kara felt completely happy with her life. Until Mother let Sarah go. For spilling one tiny, tiny, tiny drop of tomato soup on Mother’s very expensive, very clean, very white dress. She had thought it quite funny at the time.

Dear Sarah and Rose…

And that was as far as she ever got just like all the times before. The words to describe what was happening were lost. Gone in the caverns of her mind. Small, silver, perfect tears slid down her cheeks. Turning from drizzle to an all out down pour. Kara sobbed silently over the rim of the platform. Crying for all that had gone wrong. Crying for England. Crying, for home. She didn’t understand why this was all happing. She had done nothing wrong.

All the time the wind was growing stronger, threatening to snatch her off the platform. It curled around her hair, whipping into her face. Scratching its claws over her eyes. Cold, hard rain came down, pelting relentlessly into the slippery stone. The ocean rolled and boiled beneath her, booming against craggy rocks, sending up spray higher than her head.

Kara could hear shouts and screams now. Carefully twisting round on her ledge she could make out darkness cloaked figures dancing and yelling around a bonfire. All human noise ceased. All boys were still. The waves threw themselves harder at the base of the cliff. The boys scrambled, screeching to one single spot. A spot where just a moment before had been a boy. A boy named Simon. The pack of boys had turned into a convulsing mass of bloodlust, writhing to get at a part of the exposed flesh. Kara closed her eyes and tried to block out the bloodcurdling scream as one single monster drove a spear right into his heart.

Rationale

I tried to make the whole atmosphere of the piece more mysterious and sinister from Task 1. I wanted to show that I could write with versatility for a variety of different situations. I also made the atmosphere very dark and sinister to reflect how Kara is feeling, as her ideas about the island have changed very much since her arrival. For example in the beginning (Task 1) Kara thought that the island would be her ‘paradise’ but in this task all she wants is to do get back and see her family

The platform is Kara’s ‘secret, special place’, it is where she comes to ‘let it all out’. It is also where she goes to think abut her past and her family, but not her blood parents as they ‘emotionally deserted’ her. Kara’s ‘family’ includes Sarah ‘the big, bustling, motherly figure’ and Rose who is about the same age as Kara. But even this happy moment in her life ends as her ‘blood parents’ intervene. By including parts of the past I hoped to show the audience why Kara is the way she is, because of being emotionally neglected by her parents. And although Sarah was more like a mother to her than her real one, Sarah was also a mother to ‘four children of her own’ so thus the motherly qualities were stretched rather thin. Similarly by using similes such as ‘like a merry go round gone rogue’ emphasizes how left out and different she was as a child. By being hoisted from ‘nannies…to governesses…and then into boarding school’.

Additionally, by describing the platform as being both ‘beautiful and deadly’ I hoped to capture the spirit of the island, because that is what the island is. It is beautiful, because it is a paradise on earth full of white, sanded beaches and clear, blue oceans. I showed the islands beauty through its ‘raging’ storm, because rage can also be beautiful. But the island is also deadly because of what its freedom turned civilised children into: savages. Also, not just the islands freedom is deadly but the very platform Kara sits on is surrounded on all ‘sides but one by a steep deadly drop’

Much of the weather reflects Kara mood, as storms and pouring rain have connotations of ‘Sadness….Pain. Loss’. Additionally by linking Kara’s emotions directly to the weather, ‘(tears) Turning from a drizzle to an all out down pour’, emphasizes the strong emotions she is feeling. I also did this by using very short sharp one word sentences ‘Sadness. Horror. Pain. Loss’.

The repetition of the word ‘crying’ indicated both the amount she is crying and why she is crying. For example Kara is crying ‘for England’ which is the only place she has ever known and ‘for all the things gone wrong’, because she is wondering if she could have stopped anything that had happened.

During the last paragraph Kara witnesses the death of Simon from afar. I used short sentences to convey at that point how her thoughts were working and how much of a horror the event was. At first Kara does not realise that the boy was some one she knew ‘…a boy. A boy named Simon’. Additionally by using synaesthesia to show the blood lust of the boys as a ‘convulsing mass…writhing to get a part of the exposed flesh’ indicates how strong the urge was to murder and brutalize one of their own kind. Similarly it was one ‘single monster’ that drove the spear into his heart, this implies the fact that it was the person who struck the first blow, the person who struck the last blow and everyone combined into one ‘single monster, that killed him.