To Save a Life

[equality72521]

The final scene from my play to save a life.

The build up to this point is a young man in his early 20's who has lived the altruist ideal. He meets a hero who has rejected the altruist code and who teaches him the meaning of value. He cannot take living in a world of contradictions and thus makes his last stand.

THOMAS: "I have lived my life by a single motive, it is a motive which has brought me nothing but pain and misery. I have lived by that which for decades, century, mellinia has been proclaimed by all the great teachers of the world to be mans highest aspiration. I have lived by it? Hell, no I have died by it, a slow agonizing death, I have suffered the murder, the torturer, every year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second of my life has been torture, slow long drawn out. You say it wasn't torture, you ask where are my scars? Here [points to head], there are worse tortures than that of the body, when you torture a mans body he can recover, if you cut off his hand or his foot he can adapt, if you stretch him out upon a rack murdering him over the course of hours, days, or weeks, in the end he still dies, he is dead, released from that torment in the end to kiss she who is the mistress of death. When you do that to a man you still do not own him, he can still die himself, knowing himself, you may break every bone, you may mangle his body, but in the end he can die holding on to that part of him which the physical torturer in all of his depravity can never touch. No I tell you true there is a worse torture than that of the body and I have suffered at its hands, I have suffered at the hands of the truly depraved, the true monsters. You![Points a finger at all on stage] You! {points a finger at the audience] Have put my mind on a rack, who is more depraved the man who murders and mangels the body of children, or the man who mangles the mind of children. In the first death is certain, it is a fact, it is final, in the second the child is still dead, but they are a walking corpse, a body without a soul, without a mind. Since birth you have spent every one of my waking minutes telling me up is down, and down is up, pink is blue, green is white, and innocence is blood dripping from your hands. You stand on your heads asking me why I am upside down. What greater torture can there be than uncertainty, today you may give a child candy for good grades, and tomorrow you may beat him for the same grade. Still though it is worse, if it changed from day to day at least there would be some predictability, but there is not you may give a child candy now and beat him in the next second for the same reason you gave him the candy. You monsters! You taught me from before I could walk that it is mans greatest duty to sacrifice, you say that to sacrifice is noble and good, it is the highest virtue of a man. That would be bad enough but you go still further, you demand human sacrifice, you demand my! sacrifice and demand that I be the one to place myself upon your alter and still to cut out my own heart. [spits] For my entire life I have been the well which others came to for refreshment, I would say that I was like the whore who is used and then discarded. But at least the whore is paid!

[sebastian enters stage right he stands behind the onlookers leaning against a wall Thomas does not see him]

THOMAS: I was a well that all came and drank from, and I was so valued that none would dane spit in my direction. You have rung this well dry, there is nothing left here for you to take, nothing more I have to offer, nothing more I will offer. Those among you who still have something left, those who still have water, seal up your wells. Do not let them do to you as they have done to me, do not let these vampires suck you dry. They have lied to you, they have told you that sacrifice is your highest calling, it is not. Life is your highest calling, to live, to think, to have as yours that bliss which is joy. Do not be an altruist! Do not accept their creed, do not sacrifice yourself for their whims. You are better than they, do not sacrifice others for your whims just as you would not be sacrificed. Make for yourself a rational world, where men deal in trade not in sacrifice, murder be it of the body or of the mind is still murder, it is still evil. 

[sebastian steps forward and Thomas sees him for the first time]

THOMAS: [Now smiling] I have lived my life as a slave, I have had not one moment of peace, nor joy. I had no notion of value, of good, or evil. I have learned, against the odds, against all the torment, against all the indoctrination I have learned. And now in this moment for the first time in my life I am happy, really and truly happy. I did not get to live my life, I did not get to choose my life, but now I will choose how and when to end it. And I choose to die happy! [Thomas jumps from the bridge]

[kiaer.ts]

What is the least Randlike thing you have written? Could you post an excerpt?

[Kimmler]

Is this satire on Rand's style or writing?

Is it meant as a joke?

This is very talky, I can't imagine this one making Broadway.

He really says all this before jumping off the bridge? Most altruists I've met seem happy and sane. Some do commit suicide...I guess your play is a look at the life of one of them. Just strange that it has to end this way...hmmmm. Like a Christian morality play where the atheists suffer and the righteous prosper.

[Rich Engle]

Not to be discouraging, but yes, this has jumped the shark as far as derivative goes. Also, no one is going to bear a monologue of such length. I mean, even Chaplin had a rough go of it when he tried that in "The Great Dictator." I think it is just not a good idea, usually.

One of the problems with this writing seems to be somewhere in the area of how the denouement ("post denouement," I guess) is being handled. It looks like you are flogging the crap out of it, to the expense of sacrificing action, and the emotion becoming kind of dried out and one-dimensional.

A very good principle to think about is keeping the ratio of "showing" higher than "telling."

I think it would indeed be useful for you to immerse heavily in material outside of the Randian. If you are wanting to write a play, read a lot of plays! I dunno--Miller, Williams, Ibsen, Capote (even). Finding your own voice is hard. We all have our first one or two writers that we worship via emulation, modeling---but you have to get done with that and forge your own.

rde

Edited December 6, 2010 by Rich Engle