Roth’s Monologue

This is another of the files I found revolving around a playwriting class I took in 2007. However, this was not an assignment just something I opted to ask the class. They said 2 what do you think?

What we have here is two versions of the same monologue in response to the line  “Why not just light the fire and let these monsters burn?” Witch to you think is better all you need to do is respond with a 1 or a 2 and that will help me along.

ROTH-1

Mr. Tiller, I passed a playground on the way here, sprawling with children, and I thought will one of these kids grow up without a father because of what I’m doing today?  Will their fragile ears hear the cries of anguish as I reduce men to dust?  How will I go home tonight have dinner with my family and lie beside my wife knowing what I have done?  I truly believe I’m destroying something evil but in doing so I will not become evil.  The good lord said “thou shall not kill” but today we are called to kill.  If you think that I’m proud of myself, if you think that I will look back on this day with reverence, you’re wrong.  I’m a butcher, a serial mass murderer, but I’m not a beast.  This isn’t right, but it is necessary.  So I’ll do it, but I can’t just burn men alive, it would make me no less evil then they are.

ROTH-2

What would that accomplish? I have more of a reason to hate these men then any of you. I have the whimpers of pain and the smell of smoke to drive my vengeance. For your photograph I have faces and names, the hands I held, the heart whose beating lolled my child hood self to sleep, reduced to ashes. Yet, what would my wrath accomplish? Tell me, Mr. Tiller, how many liters of blood must I spill to resurrect from their ashes a victim of the ovens? The baying of what brazen bull will deafen the echoes of grief that still wring in my ears across the decades. Were I to round up every one of the soldiers of Hitler, the Seizers, and the Pharos or even every thing to walk in human form that has drawn the blood of my people what suffering could I visit upon them to remove from the world of truth but one moment spent in misery. What I will do here today is necessary but do not confuse necessity with rightness. Do not confuse dexterity with joy or justice with jubilation. We are not monsters, Mr. Tiller, we simply cannot burn men alive.