Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You and Diversity

The character of Sister Mary of in Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius explains it all for you is particularly apt to our current discussion of diversity. As somewhat obviously alluded to in the title, Sister Mary is a devout Catholic nun. We learn to our horror at the outset of the play about Mary's views, which is staged in the form of a question/answer lecture she is giving to a group: the audience. "What exactly went on in Sodom? Who asked me this question? I'm going to talk about Sodom a bit. To answer your question, Sodom is where they committed acts of homosexuality and bestiality in the Old Testament, and God, infuriated by this, destroyed them all in one fell swoop. Modern day Sodoms are New York City, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Los Angeles,... well, basically anywhere where the population is over 50,000." As one can readily see, Sister Mary has an incredibly. . . unique and specific set of ideals concerning the modern world. She believes that one way of thinking, one lifestyle, is appropriate and innately "right". She allows no room to sway from her "perfect" path, and anyone who does is immediately written off as a sinner who will from thence burn in hell. In fact, she keeps an ongoing list of people whom she believes will end up there. A pupil of her's, Thomas, reads it aloud, the list including men and woman such as Brooke Shields and Mick Jagger. Sister Mary seems to believe that all diversity need be quashed in the hope for a contrite, Christian World of "sinless" behavior. No room is left for anything creative or unique in her quest for salvation. The image of perfection she attempts to instill in her pupils terrifies them all, whom are silenced. She not only destroys any hope the could have of forming a positive religious perspective, but also their ability to become individuals. Her students at that age would resemble Pecola from The Bluest Eye, who finds herself longing for the image of perfection that society has imprinted on her, and unable to defend herself in any way. 

 The effects of her tyrannical teaching is evidenced when a group of Sister Mary's students visit her. Each of the students had her in grade school, and each in turn has his or her own story of how they had been tormented. At the outset, the Sister has no idea of their intentions. The students told her that they were there as a sort of reunion that she herself had requested. They soon ambush her, using the Sister as a source of blame for all of their misdeeds and misfortunes, including rape and spousal abuse. For the latter case, Sister Mary states that his abuses are "venial sins, which can be forgiven with an act of contrition". The others however, whom have had abortions, illegitimate children, or are homosexual, are simply "bad people". Rather than attempting to accept her former students for their different lifestyles, she chooses to label them abominations, thus destroying any hope for catharsis between herself and them.

At the climax of the play, one of the students pulls a gun on Sister Mary. At this point, the audience expects her to either be killed or to have a change of heart in order to save herself. However, she pulls out her own gun from beneath her skirts and shoots the other woman, and the homosexual man for good measure. At one point she even has Thomas hold the gun on another of the group. In Sister Mary's mind, she has not committed an unforgivable sin, as they would only have done further wrong anyway. There is no room in her now openly maniacal mind for other points of view or any lifestyle different from her own. Thus, the play concludes, in utter horror. What we can glean from this in regards to diversity is that it is something we must accept about the nature of humanity. Others will think differently than us, and attempting to block out these views will leave us immovable and bigoted, willing to commit murder to sustain our righteous beliefs. I suppose, in the end, two more deaths add but a small percentage to the longstanding tradition of religion's ability breed violence, in opposition to its very teachings.