Scene 1 Summary

This multi-award winning play dramatizes the conflict between a well-intentioned, progressive priest and an equally well-intentioned but conservative nun over the priest's relationship with a young black boy. Themes relating to the nature of doubt, the desire for justice, and the right of individuals to live with integrity, freedom and safety are explored in a series of evocatively terse scenes, leading to an explosive climactic confrontation between self-righteousness and compassion.

Father Flynn preaches a sermon on the theme of doubt, suggesting that it can be one of the most unifying, powerful and sustaining of all human experiences. He illustrates his point in two ways. First, he refers to the sense of almost universal paralysis and uncertainty in America in the days, weeks and months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (see "Quotes", p. 5). He contrasts the sense of communal loss and...