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Feeling outdated, Santa Claus allows Death to trade masks with him, Santa representing understanding, Death representing knowledge, or Science.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:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)