My Dramatic Monologue

I wrote this a while back for my application to UNC at Chapel Hill. I was given this line as the opening sentence to a novel or short story and was told to write the first page to that novel.

"What can you say when the world around you seems to be dying?"

What ensued is something that I consider my first plausible monologue...




What can you say when the world around you seems to be dying? Saying anything at all would elevate you to a status above those who’ve yet to utter a single word, those who’ve chosen a path of complicit pacifism, those who’ve resorted to watching the news every night for the faintest hope that someone with more ambition has already spoken up.
What can we change anyway? We’re not doctors; we don’t have PhDs in medicinal sciences…or even social sciences for that matter. No, we are the populace, the masses, the proletariat; we live in harmony with the fact that one voice out of millions is as readily heard as the screams of ants as we casually walk through their finger sized fortresses. With each scream we only irritate the giants more as they continue to tread upon our homes and everything we’ve ever known, but it’s tolerable as long as we’re still alive.
And what is living anymore when the childhood friends we knew have all succumbed to living in dark rooms with closed doors and no windows, lazily sipping from the grail of anesthetized euphoria? Chemically imbalanced endorphins spearing the barely lucid mind with wave upon wave of false hopes and half baked happiness…it’s sickening. The world around us is dying, and it’s dying one hopeless ingrate at a time. Am I being cynical? Maybe a little. There are plenty of “good kids” out there; just enough for one to remember what it was like to be one of them, and maybe even enough to reminded of one’s own latent “goodness.”
I’m a good kid…Aren’t I? I mean sure I start every paragraph with a question, and I’m three times my age as far as cynicism goes – but I’m not like…those kids. My life’s work has culminated in the absolute rejection of the world of those living dead around me and besides, I like being clean…


Someone please speak up. This isn’t right. I feel like I’m making a plea to an inexistent culture to resurface and take back the innocence that is childhood. Virtue has been taken hostage by broken homes and pathetically corruptible juveniles who’re searching for their own peace of mind, for their own sanctuary from…from what, Life? No! Life is nothing to hide from! Live it! It’s not easy, it’s not fair, we all deal with our own demons, get over it! My problems are no graver than yours as are yours no more threatening than mine – in a world where everything is relative, I’ll relate my day to yours no sweat. Sing me your song and I’ll sing you a sweetly subtle tune to contrast even the darkest of your notes.
Life is no more difficult than you choose to let it be and I’ve made my decision. I want happiness not at the expense of others; I want honesty not at the abandonment of sincerity, I want things…to go back to the way they were.