Last night I watched the movie "Sunset Limited" with Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. It's the kind of drama that I wish our community theater would put on. I'd love to be in it even though it was written for guys. Except I don't know which part I'd want to be--Black or White. Well, I am white so I guess I'd have to be White.
"Sunset Limited" takes place in a tenement apartment. Black (the characters are never named) has just rescued White when he saw him about to jump in front of the train. What follows next is an intense conversation between the two men about God, life and death. Black is an ex-convict who works at some kind of menial job (it's never said exactly what he does) and White is a college professor. Black is a Christian (although an unorthodox sort--he freely calls himself a heretic) and White is agnostic. It would be so easy for this play to degenerate into stereotypes, the uneducated believer showing up the folly of the educated nonbeliever, but it does not do so.
Even though I am agnostic myself I found myself agreeing with Black or at least liking him better. Black knows he's messed up in life and he feels that God has given him a mission to help those in most need. Including saving the life of a white man who does not want to live. He's dealt with suicidal people before but this one stumps him. Why does White want to die so badly? Now, you would think, given the circumstances that Black lives in, that he would be the one who wants to jump in front of the train. He's poor.. He can't even have a radio because the junkies will steal it, and that is a real sorrow for him because he loves music. But Black loves life even as messed up as it is. He loves his neighbors as messed up as they are.
White, on the other hand, has no friends. He does not want any friends. He is like the Paul Simon song, "I am a Rock, I am an Island." He's super intelligent. He cannot stand other people. He says that life no longer has any meaning and he talks a lot of philosophy to prove his point. It is all vanity and in the end it comes down to the Sunset Limited. He gets offended when Black uses the "n-word" to describe his fellow prisoners and neighbors, yet his attitude is far more offensive. He says to Black, why do you live here in this moral sewer? Black likes that phrase and writes it down in his book. Why do you live here? These people are no good, they are not worth saving. Well, first of all, maybe Black doesn't have a choice in where he can live. When you are poor, uneducated, unskilled and with a prison record to boot, there aren't many neighborhoods that will welcome you with open arms. Mine would, and that is part of its problem. By seeing his neighborhood as a mission, Black is taking something negative and trying to do something positive with it. White says why bother with these people?
So White doesn't like his own people and he damn well doesn't like Black's people either. He is in hell. As he talked I could sense the cold, cold breeze of Hell wafting up into the room. Who and what has Black invited into his house? Now, I don't believe in literal demons (I've written about that before) but sometimes there is just no other way to describe a situation like this. Is White mentally ill? Or is it something far deeper? Black probes and probes, trying to understand this strange man. He asks if White has seen a doctor. If White is taking medication. What is going on here?
White says, No. No. This is something he wants. This is the only logical conclusion there can be to his life--to anyone's life. And as he talked, I thought that the great theologians would know exactly what is wrong with White. His is the sin of pride. The sin of Satan who wanted to be God. Well, we all are self-centered and would like to be the center of the universe but most of us, even on the spectrum, manage to keep it pretty much under control. Not White. He has given into full-blown classical Pride. As in the Seven Deadly Sins Pride. He is going to kill himself and be damned with it. He doesn't even have the decency to hang himself from a steam pipe like some of Black's neighbors or shoot himself in the head--no, he has so much contempt and hatred for the human race that he is going to throw himself under a fast-moving commuter train and to hell with the engineer and the passengers and anyone else who happens to be around. That is the ultimate F--- Y-- to the world.
I'm not going to give away the ending, but I will say this. I've known a few people who have had loved ones commit suicide, and it is a cowardly act. Cowardly because the person who kills him or herself isn't around to see the havoc their act creates among those who are left behind. Yes, I understand a person can feel alone, can feel that there is no way out. There are days I myself am ambivalent about life. But Death is not the answer! My God, it comes soon enough, why cry for it.
But if you are going to do it, for God's sake, please don't involve other people. Several years ago, one of my co-workers died in a car-train collision, so I know what White's choice means. There are still so many unanswered questions about that crash--was it intentional? Or did she think that she could beat the train? Was weather a factor? Were the lights not working? Nobody knows, but I do know how it affected everyone around, from the neighbors who witnessed it to her co-workers. Don't do that. Please. If you are thinking of hurting yourself, get help. Don't be like White and make excuses why it won't work. Get help.
"Sunset Limited" takes place in a tenement apartment. Black (the characters are never named) has just rescued White when he saw him about to jump in front of the train. What follows next is an intense conversation between the two men about God, life and death. Black is an ex-convict who works at some kind of menial job (it's never said exactly what he does) and White is a college professor. Black is a Christian (although an unorthodox sort--he freely calls himself a heretic) and White is agnostic. It would be so easy for this play to degenerate into stereotypes, the uneducated believer showing up the folly of the educated nonbeliever, but it does not do so.
Even though I am agnostic myself I found myself agreeing with Black or at least liking him better. Black knows he's messed up in life and he feels that God has given him a mission to help those in most need. Including saving the life of a white man who does not want to live. He's dealt with suicidal people before but this one stumps him. Why does White want to die so badly? Now, you would think, given the circumstances that Black lives in, that he would be the one who wants to jump in front of the train. He's poor.. He can't even have a radio because the junkies will steal it, and that is a real sorrow for him because he loves music. But Black loves life even as messed up as it is. He loves his neighbors as messed up as they are.
White, on the other hand, has no friends. He does not want any friends. He is like the Paul Simon song, "I am a Rock, I am an Island." He's super intelligent. He cannot stand other people. He says that life no longer has any meaning and he talks a lot of philosophy to prove his point. It is all vanity and in the end it comes down to the Sunset Limited. He gets offended when Black uses the "n-word" to describe his fellow prisoners and neighbors, yet his attitude is far more offensive. He says to Black, why do you live here in this moral sewer? Black likes that phrase and writes it down in his book. Why do you live here? These people are no good, they are not worth saving. Well, first of all, maybe Black doesn't have a choice in where he can live. When you are poor, uneducated, unskilled and with a prison record to boot, there aren't many neighborhoods that will welcome you with open arms. Mine would, and that is part of its problem. By seeing his neighborhood as a mission, Black is taking something negative and trying to do something positive with it. White says why bother with these people?
So White doesn't like his own people and he damn well doesn't like Black's people either. He is in hell. As he talked I could sense the cold, cold breeze of Hell wafting up into the room. Who and what has Black invited into his house? Now, I don't believe in literal demons (I've written about that before) but sometimes there is just no other way to describe a situation like this. Is White mentally ill? Or is it something far deeper? Black probes and probes, trying to understand this strange man. He asks if White has seen a doctor. If White is taking medication. What is going on here?
White says, No. No. This is something he wants. This is the only logical conclusion there can be to his life--to anyone's life. And as he talked, I thought that the great theologians would know exactly what is wrong with White. His is the sin of pride. The sin of Satan who wanted to be God. Well, we all are self-centered and would like to be the center of the universe but most of us, even on the spectrum, manage to keep it pretty much under control. Not White. He has given into full-blown classical Pride. As in the Seven Deadly Sins Pride. He is going to kill himself and be damned with it. He doesn't even have the decency to hang himself from a steam pipe like some of Black's neighbors or shoot himself in the head--no, he has so much contempt and hatred for the human race that he is going to throw himself under a fast-moving commuter train and to hell with the engineer and the passengers and anyone else who happens to be around. That is the ultimate F--- Y-- to the world.
I'm not going to give away the ending, but I will say this. I've known a few people who have had loved ones commit suicide, and it is a cowardly act. Cowardly because the person who kills him or herself isn't around to see the havoc their act creates among those who are left behind. Yes, I understand a person can feel alone, can feel that there is no way out. There are days I myself am ambivalent about life. But Death is not the answer! My God, it comes soon enough, why cry for it.
But if you are going to do it, for God's sake, please don't involve other people. Several years ago, one of my co-workers died in a car-train collision, so I know what White's choice means. There are still so many unanswered questions about that crash--was it intentional? Or did she think that she could beat the train? Was weather a factor? Were the lights not working? Nobody knows, but I do know how it affected everyone around, from the neighbors who witnessed it to her co-workers. Don't do that. Please. If you are thinking of hurting yourself, get help. Don't be like White and make excuses why it won't work. Get help.
