Plot
Feeling outdated, Santa Claus allows Death to trade masks with him, Santa representing understanding, Death representing knowledge, or Science. Santa Claus, now a Scientist, makes people believe in the fictional wheelmine and the power of Science. Later, Death, masked as Santa, runs into the real Santa, who is yelling about an accident that occurred at the wheelmine. Death explains that wheelmines, nor people, really exist and then goes on to say that the only way Santa can avoid the angry citizens is to prove that he does not exist.
The people enter, disillusioned by Science, and blame Santa for the accident. A child in the crowd claims that what the mob calls Science is actually Santa Claus, and because the mob does not believe in Santa Claus, he does not exist. To thank Death for his advice, Santa gives up his body. The child returns and notices the change in Santa and they both admit that they are searching for someone they lost.
In the final scene, the woman enters, weeping about how the world has lost all the love due to knowledge. She sees Santa as Death and thinks he is the real Death and she admits that she looks forward to dying. The mob enters to announce the death of Science and the child, Santa, and the woman reunite. Santa takes off the Death mask and they realize the power of love between them.
Read more about this topic: Santa Claus: A Morality
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)