Last year’s Blog class was assigned the following prompt:
“First, grant me my sense of history,” writes Agha Shahid Ali in his poem “The Wolf’s Postscript to ‘Little Red Riding Hood’” in which he reimagines the classic fairy tale from the perspective of the story’s villain. “And then grant me my generous sense of plot: / Couldn’t I have gobbled her up / right there in the jungle?” The poem offers a complicated portrait of the “Big Bad Wolf,” including disturbing confessions and provocative questions that reexamine this allegory and consider the power of perspective in storytelling.
Poets&Writers
Write a brief story, recollection, or poem that explores the perspective of a villain in a children’s story. What new information will you include about this character? What, perhaps, was left out of the story?
Now-graduate Jake Sonderman wrote the following reply. Can you guess from which villainous perspective he writes?
I often think back to what the turning point was. Obviously it was a special situation, we had to survive on our own on that island. I have a lot of respect for Ralph in recollection. He was truly an adult and I think we would’ve all made it if we had just listened to him. I think we had all been so sequestered from the real world growing up, that once we got a taste for the hunt, the adrenaline, we became entranced. We crossed the line with Simon. I think about him everyday. It was all of us, collectively and individually, that killed him that night. I’ve thought about confessing, for all of the murders. When we were rescued, and the families of those boys didn’t see their children, there were many questions. We had no answers. As a boy, you don’t appreciate the importance of confessing. I have no doubt in my mind that every boy, even Ralph, thinks about Simon every day as I do, and will never have peace until they confess. I’m sorry, Simon. You were innocent in every possible way and were murdered for it.
