Dirty Hands: Rev. Connie Jones

Posted At : November 26, 2008 1:00 AM
Related Categories: Drama

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Excerpted from "Dirty Hands," appearing in No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre. Copyright Alfred A. Knopf Publishing Group.

Read by the Rev. Connie Jones: "When I was in college, the existentialist writers really appealed to me. I still find them challenging thinkers." Connie is an adjunct priest at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Anchorage. Early careers in teaching (English and French) and editing magazines led to a long career in local and state government in Alaska, where Connie has lived since 1967. She retired in 1998 to attend seminary in Virginia and was ordained as a priest in 2001. Connie recommends National Public Radio for the streaming audios and www.imdb.com for more than you ever wanted to know about current and obscure movies.

In Jean-Paul Sartre's play "Dirty Hands," Hugo is a writer for ‘the revolution.' Feeling he's not contributing enough, he volunteers to be an assassin, but when the time comes, he cannot pull the trigger.

His target, a wise man, tells him, "You wanted to prove that you were capable of acting and you chose the hard way, as if you wanted to gather up credit in heaven; that's youth. You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There's work to be done, that's all. And you must do what you're cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifices. It's the work in which you can best succeed. ... Better a good journalist than a poor assassin."

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