Is Reconciliation Possible?

Michael Christopher’s play The Black Angel haunts everyone who struggles for reconciliation. 

It involves Herman Engel, a former German army general who is trying to make a new beginning for himself and his wife outside a little French village.  He has spent the last thirty years in prison, having been sentenced by a Nuremberg Court for atrocities committed by his army during World War II.  Upon his release, Engle retires to this village, hoping to remain unknown and forgotten.  He builds a log cabin in the mountains and sets out to put his guilty past behind.  After decades of incarceration, Engel feels that he has earned the right to start over. 

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However, there is a journalist named Morrieaux who has been keeping track of the old general.

There are some events which he cannot forget.  His family had been massacred by Engel’s army when they overran his village during the war.  Everyone had been shot to death by his soldiers.  For thirty years, the journalist has been planning his revenge.  Hatred burns deep within his heart.  If a law court would not sentence him to die, Morrieaux would take matters into his own hands and condemn him.  He succeeds in inciting the fanatics in the village and that evening, the plan is for them to come up the hill, burn down Engel’s cabin, and shoot the general and his wife.

But the journalist is not satisfied with his revenge.  He still has unanswered questions.  So before the mob attacks, he goes to the general’s cabin and spends the afternoon asking questions.  Morrieaux is compelled to get the whole story straight.  As the afternoon wears on, something begins to happen to Morrieaux.  His need for revenge begins to sour.  He experiences newborn doubts about what he is doing and decides to warn Engel of the villagers’ intentions.  He offers to take the general and his wife to safety.  But Engel waits before he responds.  He will go but under one condition – that Morrieaux would forgive him.  Forgive?  Morrieaux is willing to save Engle and his wife but forgive?  Never!  That evening, the villagers turned into a mob, climbed the hill, and burned down the cabin before shooting Engel and his wife to death.

The story leaves you gasping for answers.  Morrieaux’s inability to forgive after years and years causes you to ask, “Why couldn’t he forgive?”  “How is it Morrieaux could not put behind things that happened years earlier with someone who had already suffered for years for his wrongs?”  “Why could there not be reconciliation?”