Orson Welles as Father Mapple in Moby Dick,
directed by John Huston, script by Huston and Ray Bradbury, 1956. |
Alan Lost in Boston
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Characters
ALAN, an unusually quick-witted 16-year-old Jewish boy, short, energetic, handsome, dark-haired, looks older than he is, a sportsman, budding writer, and good student, who enjoys reading Mark Twain’s satirical writings, attends a high school in Queens, during the hippie heydays in the early 1970s, where he learns about the Puritans, the witch trials in Salem, and the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
MRS. STERN, Alan’s English teacher—an old-fashioned, rigid, elderly woman, always prim and proper—has hammered many facts about the Puritans and Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter into the heads of her students. She scolds Alan for his swearing and dissuades him from reading Mark Twain, whose literary quality she considers inferior.
PURITAN MINISTER in Boston, an older, diabolical, anti-Semitic man, unwilling to let go of his prejudice, no matter how deeply he gets challenged in his own church by Alan in 1643.
MRS. STERN, Alan’s English teacher—an old-fashioned, rigid, elderly woman, always prim and proper—has hammered many facts about the Puritans and Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter into the heads of her students. She scolds Alan for his swearing and dissuades him from reading Mark Twain, whose literary quality she considers inferior.
PURITAN MINISTER in Boston, an older, diabolical, anti-Semitic man, unwilling to let go of his prejudice, no matter how deeply he gets challenged in his own church by Alan in 1643.
Excerpt
ALAN (louder): Sir, sir. . . I am . . . I am . . .
MINISTER (high on his crusade against Jews, not wanting to be interrupted): And yet his manners and aspect, in spite of all, were those of a man of the world, and a gentleman. Well, it is as hard to give an idea of this ugly Jew as of the beautiful Jewess. . . . I rejoiced exceedingly in this Shylock, this Iscariot; for the sight of him justified me in the repugnance I have always felt towards his race.
ALAN (jumps up and shouts at the top of his lungs): Sir, with all due respect . . . I am . . . a Jew (sits down, almost frightened by his own audacity).
MINISTER (high on his crusade against Jews, not wanting to be interrupted): And yet his manners and aspect, in spite of all, were those of a man of the world, and a gentleman. Well, it is as hard to give an idea of this ugly Jew as of the beautiful Jewess. . . . I rejoiced exceedingly in this Shylock, this Iscariot; for the sight of him justified me in the repugnance I have always felt towards his race.
ALAN (jumps up and shouts at the top of his lungs): Sir, with all due respect . . . I am . . . a Jew (sits down, almost frightened by his own audacity).
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