How Jill Broke Jack: Week 1 Storytelling

How Jill Broke Jack
Once there was a beautiful couple. They had known they were right for each other since they met when they were eleven. They had overcome a lot in their lives together. You could say it was sort of an uphill battle, but they always persevered. People were always trying to break them up, saying that they didn’t belong together. Not only this, but they never seemed to catch a break. Earlier in the year Jill lost her job. Right after that Jack’s father died, which was devastating to both of them. Although many hardships came their way, the couple powered through them. They overcame everything that was thrown at them. 

Couple Hiking
Found at Pixabay

Finally, things seemed to be going great! Jack proposed to Jill, and they were going to have a magnificent wedding. Everyone was going to be there! Jack couldn’t have been more excited to marry the love of his life.

Couple Swinging
Found at pdpics

The wedding was beautiful, and Jack and Jill were on top of the world (or a hill…)! They were so in love...or so Jack thought. Jill had a secret she had been hiding from Jack for quite some time.


Not long after the wedding Jack found out that his beloved wife had been cheating on him with another man. Not only was it another man, it was his older brother. His heart was shattered. He couldn’t forgive his wife, and so he divorced her, but her never fully recovered. Jack never again got to the blissful state he was in when he got married. He lost who he though of as his beautiful queen.

Broken Heart
Photo by David Goehring

Don’t worry, Jill got what she had coming. Her other boyfriend broke up with her after Jack confronted him about the affair. She was left with nothing. She lost everything in the divorce, her family turned against her, and she had no one to turn to. She was scorned for the rest of her life.



In the end both were left broken, and without the love they had once cherished.



Author’s Note:

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water;

Jack fell down and broke his crown,

And Jill came tumbling after.

Everyone knows the original Jack and Jill nursery rhyme. In the original rhyme Jack and Jill seem to just be doing an ordinary task, like fetching water for their home. They go up the hill, and then eventually both end up falling down the hill. It never seemed like anything too extreme in the original, so I made it take on a more dramatic ending. I made my story after this rhyme as if it were figurative, instead of literal. They go up the hill that many people do, which is overcoming the hardships they are thrown in life. They finally come to the top, where everything is good, but after a while things start to go wrong again. Going down the hill is a lot faster than going up it, and they just don’t have the energy to climb it again. This is why they do not stay together and work things out. When Jack breaks his “crown” I imagined this as him losing his queen, or Jill. Then after Jack goes through all these terrible things, Jill has her downfall as well.


Bibliography:

This story is based on the nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill Went up the Hill" in The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang (1897)