Plot
The story is set in an unnamed Latin American country that is painfully third world. The plot revolves around a captured prisoner who may or may not be the second coming of Christ, though Miller deliberately leaves the divinity of his unseen protagonist ambiguous. He is said to be able to perform miracles such as walk through walls, a major problem for the prison guards, and, because his popularity among the impoverished citizens, the military dictator of the nation has sentenced him to be crucified. This creates many moral dilemmas with the play's cast of characters, which include a wealthy land-owner who is the cousin of the dictator, his depressed daughter—a close friend of the accused—and an American television production team that arrives to broadcast the crucifixion.
Read more about this topic: Resurrection Blues
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“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)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)