The Christian's War

SCENE ONE

May 7, 1946


[Scene opens with two men and a young woman sitting in a London conference room. World War II is hardly a year in the past, and morality is still low in many places. London has not fully recovered from the damage it faced, and the world as a whole is still facing the pain that comes with the years after a war. A man with an American accent is speaking at the head of the table.]

ELIOT: [Having read for several minutes already] Unreal City, / Under the brown fog of a winter dawn (7), / A crowd stands waiting at a great grey wall; / They cry out from both sides with an unheard call. / A wretched wall it is, that divides / A single city once united and grand, / Ruined now by one wretched Man. / Berlin, the Capital of Heartbreak.  [He stops there, then closes the notebook carefully.] That’s everything so far.

LEWIS: [Nods, leaning back in his chair.] I think it captures the situation well. It’s very much in the same vein as “The Waste Land,” I’d say, which is excellent.

ELIOT: I appreciate the compliment. This war is really in the same vein as the Great War, isn’t it?

TOLKIEN: That’s true. [He pauses for a while, thinking. LEWIS is aware of his experiences with both wars and watches him knowingly.] I could have told them we would see another conflict as soon as the armistice expired.

ELIOT: A temporary ceasefire, that’s all it was. [He shakes his head.] The way of the world.

TOLKIEN: Painting leaves better than trees (94).

ELIOT: [Blinks.] Come again?

TOLKIEN: Something I wrote. Trying to create something grand out of something simple. Trying to end a war without ending it at all. It doesn’t work without the proper direction (111-112).

ELIOT: [He thinks for another moment.] That’s a good way of saying it. [He packs his things and stands.] I’m afraid I have an appointment on the other side of town. Thank you for your time, gentlemen. Miss.

[ELIOT nods at all three others as he leaves. The young woman, who still has not spoken, smiles thoughtfully as the door closes behind ELIOT. The others remain seated; TOLKIEN is leaning with his elbows on the table and his hands folded in front of his mouth. He’s still looking at ELIOT’S empty chair absently.]

LEWIS: Tollers.
TOLKIEN: [Distractedly.] Hm. [He looks up and blinks.] Nothing. Or, really—[he glances between the others.] We’ve just experienced two world-wide wars, causes and effects of one another, and here we are now, waiting for what happens next. All I wonder is, what is next? What are we to do about any of this?

O’CONNOR: [Smiling again.] I can’t say too much. I hadn’t even been thought of yet during the Great War.

LEWIS: But you can offer a perspective that neither of us can. How old were you at the start of this war?

O’CONNOR: Fourteen. But I hardly thought of it until I was sixteen and I saw my friends leaving to meet their deaths. Before then I tried not to let myself be bothered.

TOLKIEN: There’s merit to that. [He leans forward suddenly with his arms on the table. LEWIS does the same, and O’CONNOR shifts her chair closer to the table.] You might argue that the end of a war affects more people than the war itself. Not everyone comes home. That leaves people mourning. The men who do come home are not truly the same men who left. They’re already broken, and the people they come back to feel helpless to fix them. Everyone expects life to return to “the way it was,” but it doesn’t. It never does.

O’CONNOR: Nothing is constant.

LEWIS: Except—

O’CONNOR: The source of everything. No real pleasure in life (133) except Him.

TOLKIEN: No real truth in life except Him.

LEWIS: [Smiling] Well, that’s the answer to everything, isn’t it? And it’s rather simple to find. The earth is all full of Christ’s messengers (108*), and it’s not as if we haven’t been made messengers ourselves.

TOLKIEN: [Leaning back in his chair. He presses the tips of his fingers together thoughtfully.] It’s always easier to have some task after a horrid experience. Perhaps that’s what we’re meant to be doing. We’re all authors, are we? We’ve learned to communicate things in ways that people can understand, and ways that allow people to escape. I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used (60). Perhaps, while providing a means of escape from this world, we can also provide a means of returning to Christ.

LEWIS: Allegory.

TOLKIEN: [Sharply] Certainly not. [LEWIS chuckles quietly, and TOLKIEN shakes his head.] You do these things just to peeve me.

O’CONNOR: [Confused, but amused.] Allegory can be a weak form of argument. Simple truth might be better.

TOLKIEN: [Gestures broadly in O’CONNOR’s direction. Continuing to LEWIS, still with the sharp but not truly heated tone:] Some wisdom! There you are, Jack, some wisdom in Miss O’Connor here. You might—

[TOLKIEN is interrupted by the door opening. A young man pokes his head in. He sees the trio inside, then knocks his head accidentally on the doorframe in his hurry to backtrack.] Ouch—sorry, wrong room. [He moves to leave.]

LEWIS: Half a moment. [The young man stops.] I know you. You were at the writers’ conference two days ago? American, Mr…

YOUNG MAN: Bradbury. Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Lewis, I—

LEWIS: Nonsense. Sit down. We’re having an important discussion.

BRADBURY: Ah. Well, no reason to say no. [He sits in the empty chair next to O’CONNOR and shakes her hand. They introduce themselves. Bradbury shifts back to face the table. He pauses, offering a brief smile.] Not here to burn any books, are we?

END SCENE




Works Cited

Eliot, T.S. “The Waste Land.” Originally published Boni and Liveright, 1922.

Tolkien, J.R.R. Tree and Leaf. HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.

O’Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.

Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet. Scribner Classics, 2003. *quote paraphrased for the sake of the narrative; original “the

    island is all full of eldila.”

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