Lord of the Flies: Journal #4

Chapter: Painted Faces and Long Hair

Perspective: Ralph

He's So Selfish

I'm going crazy. Jack is insane. I can't believe that he actually thinks that he can just ignore his responsibilities and so whatever he wants! The day of the great fire, I put Jack in charge of keeping the signal fire running smoothly. But today, he's hit an all-time low.
This morning, all of us on the beach saw a ship out in the ocean. I looked up to the mountain and didn't see any smoke at all. I sprinted up there as fast as I could- practically getting whipped by all the creepers- and when I got to the fire, well, I didn't because there was no fire there to get to. I just stared at the wood pile, deciding whether I should run back to the beach and get Piggy's glasses to restart the fire, or if I should just try to improvise and make the fire out of something else. Then Jack came. I was so belligerent, and blatant. I started screaming at Jack, and he really couldn't find anything that was wrong with him. That angered me on another level as well. The whole time I was staring malevolently at him, as he glowered back. He was convinced that because he had an impalpable pig with gouts flowing out of it, that it was okay that he had ruined the one chance that we'd had of being rescued since we crashed here almost a week ago.
The pig, which was a very nice catch, was hearty and fat. We had to use Piggy's specs to get it started. Once we actually had the pig cooking, there was a little bickering between Piggy and Jack. Jack had just stolen Piggy's specs to start the fire, and he wasn't too happy about that. Piggy sort of had a momentary lapse of not being courageous. He stood up for himself, and got Jack to give him his specs back.
Jack gave me some of the pig. It was fantastic. It tasted so good compared to all the fruit and stuff that we've been eating for the past five days. I was actually happy that they had caught the pig. Maybe the being on this island isn't as bad as I thought.