Jack and the Whale of a Problem

Description

The story begins following Jack, a 20 year old lad who unfortunately epitomizes the Brit abroad. As he cockily struts his way along the beachfront party strip in a European party destination, he carelessly chucks his rubbish and anything else that he wants into the ocean. Broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bags, traffic signs, an inflatable sex doll etc. Him and his friends make their way to a party boat where they all get completely smashed. Jack is thrown overboard by his mates as a joke and is eaten by a whale.While he’s in it’s belly, he pulls his iphone out and turns the torch on, only to be confronted with all of the rubbish that he’d previously thrown into the ocean. The whale has eaten it all. He sees a burn mark on the whale’s stomach and goes to touch it. The whale lets out a song of pain. As he looks around the rubbish becomes overcome with guilt and has an existential crisis over each item he tossed in the ocean, ending with him crying into the arms of the inflatable sex doll. He collects all the rubbish in the belly into one of the bags and vows to change his ways and to try and educate others.Jack and his rubbish bag are thrown back up by the whale next to the party boat. Jack\'s friends start to scream and shout in delight and throw a life ring out to him. Once he\'s back on board he tells his friends what happened and they get fed up with his \'preaching\' and throw him and his rubbish overboard again. He swims back to shore and we finish on him separating the rubbish into recycling. As he reaches into plastics to recycle the sex doll, another hand appears holding an inflatable flamingo. We cut back to see a soaking wet young woman smile at him.

Biblical Connection

I am using Jonah and the Big Fish/ Whale as my Biblical source and adapting the tale by putting an environmental twist on it. In the Bible, God called to Jonah and told him to go preach to Nineveh because the people were very wicked. Jonah didn’t want to and tried to escape by boat, but God sent a great storm upon the ship and Jonah was thrown overboard. God sent a big fish/whale, to swallow Jonah and to save him from drowning. He was in its belly for three days and during that time Jonah prayed for help, reflected and repented. Then, God had the big fish throw up Jonah, who preached to Nineveh and warned them to repent before the city is destroyed in 40 days. The people believed Jonah, turned from their wickedness, and God had mercy on them. I think the modern parallel is that we’re all trying to escape environmental problems by running away from them. Eventually, we will be put into a position where we are forced to face them, and hopefully we will be able to repent and the earth will be able to heal itself.