The Gift for the Darkness

Journal Entry #8

I think the scene where the hunter cut off the pigs head is the most disturbing. The reason is that the paragraph is so descriptive and gory that it has to make you feel a bit uneasy. One part that makes me feel queasy is when they describe the pig getting torn to shreds. They say that they are wrestling it to the ground and as they do so they are poking it with spears and ripping the flesh. After that They say Jack gets his knife out and he cuts it's throat while letting the blood spill all over the place. They cut it's stomach open and they gut it, leaving a steaming pile of pig guts in Simon's chapel. They lastly cut off it's head and put it on a wooden stake in the middle of the field. The whole reason behind this vivid scenario is the hunters wanted to give the beast a gift. The hunters believed that they had to make a peace offering with the beast to get it on their side. So they went out into the forest and they killed a pig, cut it's head off, and put it on a steak in the middle of Simons field. After that the hunters left leaving this entire mess. I think this is enough proof to help you understand why this is so disturbing. If it isn't, go read the book and read it in a much more detailed perspective.
I believe that Jack and his hunters are responsible for Simon's death. In chapter eight, page one hundred fifty two and one hundred and fifty three,there is a quote that goes like this, “The beast was on it's knees in the center, it's arms folded over it's face. It was crying out against the abominable noise, something about a body on the hill. The beast struggled forward, broke the ring, and fell over the steep edge of the to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down on the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.” This proves that the hunters intentionally went after Simon whether they thought he was the beast or not. My next quote is also from page one hundred and fifty two, “The littluns screamed and blundered about, fleeing from the edge of the forest, and one of them broke the ring of biguns in his terror. “Him! Him!” So as you can see they didn't even have time to think this through, they just attacked. In total, Jack and his hunters killed Simon because they thought that he was the beast even though he wasn't. I relate this to the humans thought process. The part of our thought process I'm thinking about is our reaction to act before thinking. In this case that made a huge mistake. I hope I've made this more clear to you than it was before.