Year 6
Daniel Pennac's The Eye of the Wolf was the starting point for Year 6 producing narratives or character desrcriptions bringing to life the protagonist of the story.
James - UCL
The scream flew out of the muzzle of the wolf, echoing far beyond his enclosure. Nobody heard. A second cry of despair leapt from the wolf. Yet again, nobody had heard. The realization had already set in by this point; he was trapped alone, only finding company with the stone-cold walls of the rustic, metal prison. Trapped in his mind, he stared blankly at the bark on the trees across his pen. He imagined those days he was free to hunt with his brethren; the same days he slept under the same den as his pack.
At twilight, day by day, this would always happen. He begins stumbling across the perimeter of his cage, however like a slum it was, wondering if the moon and the stars felt as lonely as he was. As the clock strikes midnight, he walks into the center of the den and slumps onto the muddy ground, dreaming of the days he fended for himself, free of captivity. He lay put until he wept himself to sleep, counting the hours as they came by. Once he was a hero, now reduced to zero.
In a heartbeat, the wolf returned to his senses and fixed his attention to the worn-down fence walls in front of him. As he caught back his posterity, he hunched forward his battered and brittled back against the rays of the waking sun, widened his lone eye, and shot up his tail, as if it would be a lamppost. Having stretched his paws, he sprung up out of his burrow and stumbled his way over to the bars of his cage walls. He glanced through the openings to see an ominous onlooker tracing his every step. Aware of his sole purpose of providing entertainment for the people of his captures, he brushed aside any thought of a problem. However, the visitor would never stop staring. They stood out, contrasting the rest.
Surfacing, the sea of squealing and screaming schoolchildren was a boy who stood out of the rest. As still as a statue, this wonder of a boy was not to move a muscle - an anchored tugboat fighting the waves of the hurricane. However, his hazel eyes enchanted an aroma around his body; luring everyone around him to see the magic encased in his little heart. As his predatory powers demanded, the wolf dug his claws deep into the mud and sharpened his view onto the wondrous boy kept behind the fencing. Upon making close eye contact, he felt a sense of warmth - some strange kind of connection between them. The boy behind the bars looked deep into the blue wolf’s soul and shut his left eye in empathy for the scar burnt into the lone wolf's eyelid.
As their glances interlocked, a story was shared. Both survivors of man’s cruelty, they were the light and dark; different yet the same. Resilience and sacrifice were their greatest strengths.
Nose to nose, the wolf wept his last tears. It seemed he had at last found himself in the world. Finally, he was connected, at last, he was at peace.
Henry - Goldsmiths
Repeatedly shunned by the tyrannical humans who exploit freedom from beyond his cage, Blue Wolf cowers in his captivity with his one eye bulging with hatred. Now hiding away beneath the darkness and emptiness of his midnight shadow, Blue Wolf is closed in a cocoon of his soul-shattering sorrow, never to emerge with his one soul mighty spirit again.
On first glance, he was one he has one eye that could tell a story, and yet it’s on its last chapter. One eye that has seen it all. Despite the loss of his other eye, it appears the other half of his vision contains images so touching and vivid, they are unlike any other. I pondered this magnificent creature as if it is a piece in my puzzle that doesn’t seem to fit in place. I pity this veteran of a creature as each lap of his diminutive enclosure is a lap away from his glorious mortality and one step closer to the acceptance of his lifelong imprisonment. I shed a single tear for this neglected creature as scars and bruises trace his fur, and yet, after all his injuries and fatalities, I believe a speck of desire still lives on inside the benevolent wolf.
Longingly, Blue Wolf’s piercing, golden eye stares out of the wooden sign on his enclosure. Four words are carved in, reading ‘Place of habitat: Alaska.’ I look closer and see images of frosty, hilltops and snow falling off the woodland evergreen trees onto the pale white ground.
At once, Blue Wolf redirects his eye, and gazes into both of mine. First with a devastating look of hatred, but afterwards it changed into what can only be described as a look of sorrow and anguish. Step by step, I walk close to the cage of misery. Tear by tear, Blue Wolf weeps inside his cage of cruelty.
I press my head on the cold steel bars and I close my eyes. My pain seeps through the enclosure and I am united with the wolf. We were the embodiment of sorrow, on to each other’s heartbreak.
Drip. This was the sound of the last tear Blue Wolf suppressed before he let go and closed his wounded eye. Then, darkness. Darkness wrapped itself around Blue Wolf’s vision, and from there, he finally believed he was at peace. Goodbye, Blue Wolf.
Ibraheem - Kings
A singular lonely tear travels down his sorrowful face, landing in a puddle of sadness by his feet. The stars and moon can be seen in his eyes as the wolf howls at them. Despite the sadness in his lone eye, there is a stealth and strength that generates from the creature. Hiding behind the intimidating barriers, the lone wolf waited for the gawking eyes to gather for another dreadful day. His fur is thick, majestic, and shimmering under the blazing beams of the sun. The sunlight sprinkles turquoise spots across the sapphire coat. A colossal scar across his face tells the stories of his past.
At that moment, he shifted his body and sorrowfully padded towards the front of his isolated enclosure. Once an alpha in his kingdom, he was as feared as he was respected. In this world, he’s nothing more than a prisoner.
The ugliness in his lone sapphire eye is a symbol of the trauma he has endured. Stolen from his park and snatched of his freedom by the deadliest predators of all; men. Attempting to shake off the pain of his past, he begins his habitual pacing of his enclosure. Again and again, like a pendulum in a clock that never stops. Tick…tock…tick…tock.
I feel obligated to stand by the tormented beast as it paces in its grief. As time passes by, I do not. We associate with each other from our pasts, built up of betrayal and woe. A history of cruelty, leading to his current imprisonment, shrouded in a hood of sanctuary.