Guests of the Nation - alternate ending

 image from https://them0vieblog.com

        

        "Do you understand?" 'Awkins says. "I'm a deserter or anything else you like, but from this on I'm one of you. Does that prove to you that I mean what I say?" Noble raised his head, and we met eyes and agreed on something, something he and I had decided ages ago. Donovan began to speak and we lowered our heads, "For the last time, time have you any messeges to send?" says Donovan in a cold and excited voice. "Ah, shut up, you, Donovan; you don't understand me, but these fellows do. They're my chums; they stand by me and I stand by them."

        I alone of the crowd saw Donovan raise his Webley to the back of 'Awkins's neck, and as he did I raised my arm and shut my eyes and tried to say a prayer. 'Awkins had begun to say something else when a shot echoed throughout the windy bog. And I opened my eyes, and Jeremiah Donovan falls to the ground fast and hard, like a tree log, and we, 'Awkins and Noble and Belcher and I, froze there as the lantern light illuminated the blood pooling around Donovan's neck.

        So we stand there, only the Englishmen in awe, my gun still smoking from the shot. 'Awkins was turned facing us now, and said words under his breath about chums and capitalist-tool-something, with a strange satisfied expression on his face. It didn't matter. Noble motions to pick the corpse up and so I follow, 'Awkins being handed the lantern, Belcher saying something like "e' knows more abaout it all tha' we do". Noble and I lower Donovan into the spot, meant for the Englishmen, and we fix up the ground. Then we stood in the wonder of it all, that Donovan was dead and my gun had killed him and only we knew.

        "Well, chums, what about it?" Belcher mutters and we look at him and we say "As you please, chum" and all walk back inside, Belcher greeting the old woman at the door, to the cards, mumbling about nonsense, far away from that little spot of black bog where we had left Jeremiah Donovan to sink into nothing.

        The reason I reimagined the ending the way I did was that I really wasn't satisfied with the original ending (though that's what it was probably supposed to be like, realistic and sad). I felt like most of the things that had happened earlier in the story, had really happened for nothing because even though the Englishmen and Noble and Bonaparte were all friends, they still stuck to their roles assigned by the war. I felt like a different ending that echoed the time they spent together would make more sense (though it would be very optimistic and unrealistic.)

        My ending changes the meaning of the story from focusing on and highlighting the cruelty of war + a soldiers duty to overcoming orders for the 'moral good'. The story focuses on how the main characters are torn between a sense of duty in the war, carrying out orders, and what they think is right or 'good'. In the original ending, duty wins over morals to emphasize how really, in war nobody wins.

        My ending changes this moral by having the 'good' 'win' over the sense of duty (though it is a bit of an empty victory.) The character of Jeremiah Donovan really represents this more extreme side of duty, following orders no matter the cost. By killing him off, you could say that the characters sense of duty is completely gone by the end of the story, with them now following their morals instead of orders.