May the Wolves Not Eat Us Whole
I saw “The Grey” last night. It was pretty decent. There were a lot of wolves in it. The movie had so much to do with wolves that at one point Liam Neeson said, “Would you shut up about the wolves! I don’t want to hear anymore about the wolves!” But I had gone to the movie wanting to hear only of wolves and see only wolves. If there was a guy onscreen there had better also be a wolf about to eat him or be killed by him. I like the idea of wolves.
I wrote a play in college called “May the Wolves Not Eat Us Whole.” It was not as pretentious as the title suggests. There was no titular line in the play. I thought of the title before I wrote the play. I just wanted to use it because it sounded badass. It had the word “wolves” in it. I wrote the play because one of the guys in the theater department had seen a play I wrote and wanted me to write one for him. I felt like a real hotshot. He wanted the play to take place at a party. I said okay. I went home and wrote a pretty bad play. It took a long time. I thought of that awesome title and just worked from there. It was about theatre kids who decide to have a huge party in a cabin up north to celebrate the end of their time in the theatre department. But little do they know, their cabin is surrounded by WOLVES! Yikes! One actor goes missing and the rest of them freak out and look for him and they’re afraid of wolves and stuff. They also learn that they’re afraid to graduate college. You see, the cabin represented their fun, cozy lives as theatre majors in college where they are successful. The outdoors, and the wolves in particular, represented their future. They were afraid to go out and live their lives. Okay? Do you understand? They were afraid of wolves and of their futures simultaneously. It’s called symbolism.
I emailed the guy the play and he didn’t wrote back. And after a while I called him about it and he said he hadn’t finished reading it or he needed to read it again or something. And that was the end of “May the Wolves Not Eat Us Whole.” I should have just had wolves eat all of the characters. I still wanted to use that title though, and that’s why it is the title of this blog post.
