The Prisoner

With this script, I hope to show a mirror to people who push away feelings of self awareness to a point of hurting others, or speak to those who deal with people that do this. While the narrative explored in my script is an extreme exaggeration of this issue, I want to use it to show the idealistic views people have of themselves to avoid feeling guilt and shame. 

My script is called The Prisoner. In it, after getting sent to prison, a man’s refusal to accept that he won’t see his family again, eventually leads him to discover that he is in prison for a more sinister reason than he has allowed himself to believe. Throughout the story we see his idealized view of himself start to unravel as his true nature bleeds through a thin facade. I use this main character, Jimmy, not only to shed light on the dangerous tendency of avoiding guilt and shame with a veil of condence and self righteousness, but to raise questions for the viewers to consider. With Jimmy’s situation, we don’t know how much of his true actions he is really guilty for, because of how little awareness of his own situation he has=. Thus, I hope to make readers wrestle with questions like: Is it better to make people live with the evil they commit, or allow them to feel some peace and self satisfaction even if it is not earned? And Where we draw the line between good and bad people given unconventional situations? How do we know to hold them accountable? 

My original inspiration for the type of prison this is was a kind of detention center they currently have in China, where the guards stay in the cells with the prisoners to attain the highest security possible. While my original idea incorporated more elements of this issue of detention centers in China, I ultimately strayed away from that idea, but kept the element of the guard inside of the cell with the prisoner. I like this aspect because it opens up room for dialogue between the moral guard and the morally vague— but maybe evil, we don't really know— prisoner. As for the idea of people holding an idealized version of themselves to avoid negative feelings, I took inspiration from this idea from both the current people we have in government right now, and a lot of people I have dealt with in my own life. 

Through the process of writing my script, I have seen the importance of analyzing my work from another person’s perspective. I was able to do this through the in-class workshops because they allowed me to hear my writing for what it really is, rather than subconsciously 

lling in the gaps in my writing when I read it to myself. If it hadn’t been for this process, I would not have been forced to assess my writing from the point of view of someone reading it who could not ll in the gaps that I could. As a result of this workshop, I have tried to make my

script more fun and interesting by expanding and adding depth to my dialogue, and cutting down on action and setting explanations, which did nothing to add to the overall storyline. 

Thank you for reading, 

Liliana Rodriguez