An English project for Miller's The Crucible (write a monologue to wrap up the play) that turned out much better than I had expected. This actually stunned my dad for a second, which is a pretty amazing feat, let me tell you. ^_^. Someday I'll update my other fics, I swear! (Kyr: Yeah right.) *smacks Kyr upside the head* Shut your trap. No one wants to hear anything you say. (Ed: Ouch.) (Kyr: *hits Ed*) (Ed: Hey!) Argh. *shakes head despairingly*
---------------


I am a man of faith -- I must have faith, or I have nothing. What virtue or meaning is there to the life of a reverend if he does not believe the very word he preaches? A great man once said, in my presence, that God is dead. I cannot accept that as truth and still keep my sanity, and yet... I can only look at what madness surrounds me and wonder... if not dead, then blind? If not gone, then merely disinterested? If God loves all men and forgives all sins, then He has forsaken this place, and me along with it.

In the aftermath of this great storm of senseless vengeance that has swept through Massachusetts, the people whose lives have been destroyed are finally beginning to creep out of their holes and safe places, shrinking from the wreckage of their memories, to raise weak voices against what cannot be undone. Inactivity in the face of wrongdoing is a sin in itself; no one here has any innocence left. What good are the tears of children, now that the war against sin is lost? Now that it is useless to protest, a thousand silent voices cry to an empty courtroom for the release of the accused souls.

Silence and solitude reign in the ghost town of Salem. The people wander as if lost, numbed by the realization of their own self-mutilation. Do they finally begin to understand, as I said in vain so short and yet so long a time ago, that life is God's most precious gift, and that no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it?

O Lord, I offer up my last prayer for forgiveness, little good that it may do. I ask not for the solution to all human error, nor praise for myself, for I deserve none. I ask only that in this land of the blind, you turn your one eye back to us, your disciples, and judge us as you once did -- with fairness and forgiveness, with love and justice. We must have faith, or we have nothing; but we have nothing to believe in if that faith is unrequited.

A great man once said that God is dead. That man now hangs dead above the town square, a warning for liars, though all he ever did was tell the truth. Dead, then? Blind?

Not dead... just sleeping.

Signed,
Rev. John Hale