Situation:Robert is talking about Jeremy (his younger brother) in a letter home to his sister, Emily. Robert and Jeremy are soldiers fighting in World War II.
This monologue could be performed two ways: Robert writing the letter or Emily reading the letter
"...Emily, it's so hard to even be here. It's killing me to watch Jeremy- this war is ripping him apart piece by piece, leaving him holding on by a thread. He is on the verge of insanity. Even the company commander is worried about him. He never sleeps, he never eats, he cringes and cowers at the slightest noise. He's going to hit the breaking point before too long. I'm so worried. I have never seen my brother like this. Matt and Brandon are worried too. It's so hard to see him like this, see him have to go through this. At night, he sits in the corner, curled up in a tiny ball. It's as if the war has made his mind regress and he has become a young infant once again. I mean, it's been almost a year since we were shipped over here, and every day he has slipped farther and father away. I'm worried that before long, there will be nowhere else for him to slip except into the blackness of insanity. I can't watch my little brother like this. He's not even nineteen yet, and this war is slowly killing him. It's slowly killing all of us, but it seems that either he started out a bit farther into the process or it's eating him away a bit quicker. I think it may be the latter. Jeremy has always been frightened anyway and shy and scared of everything and I think all the guns and death and violence just sent him over that ledge. So, he's tumbling slowly down the bottomless pit, hoping there's something at the bottom to catch him and break his fall. Because if there's not, he will continue getting worse and worse until nothing will ever pull him out. I'm so worried about him I forget to worry about our other brother and myself sometimes. But I've never considered the fact that Brian needed worrying about. Matt pointed out to me last night, however, that Brian does seem to be affected - in a different way - by the events of this war. His mind is not gone into recluse, as Jeremy's has, but his heart seems to have. He doesn't seem to care at all. He stares at nothing, sheds no tears, misses nothing, and thinks of nothing but the war and what our next move will be and what their next move might be. Maybe it's easier that way, but I somehow can't believe it would be. To ignore all feelings and emotion and forget how to care, how to love. I don't know if he's forgotten how or if he simply refuses to. But how can he not see how hurt and how much worse Jeremy gets every single day? He falls farther into the black hole of that seemingly bottomless pit, and each day slips farther away from my grasp, which he has long since been out of reach of. I have no idea how to pull him back or how to help him, but that's all I wish to do. I want to help my brother, make it all better as I used to when we were little and he fell off a horse or out of the hayloft. I want to help him, but there's nothing anybody can do. I think all he needs is for this war to be over, but that seems like a never. This will never end, the war will go on for our whole lives and we will forever be fighting. The Japanese may have bombed Pearl Harbour, but it wasn't all of them, and I don't understand the point of fighting any war at all. I want out...I just want out. I want to come home. I want to see you and Mother and Father again. I want to ride through our fields on Midnight and go fishing in the pond with Jeremy as we did less than two years ago. Just over a year ago. Life has stopped and it seems as though time has too and it will not start again until some resolution has been made to end this war. And yet we keep getting older, and slipping farther away from everything we know as each and every day goes slowly and tantalisingly by. It taunts us, for each day we believe we are one day closer to the end of this conflict, this fight, this "Great War" between the continents. But what is so great about this war? I don't care what the President or the journalists or the politicians say. They are not over here. They are not living through this rotten hell of a so-called life. My life has been ripped away by the stupid and childish antics of a few greedy leaders. Let them take over the world, for all I care. I just want my home back, and my family, and my life...and my brothers. I want Jeremy back from beyond help and Brian back from beyond all hope. How can God let something like this happen? I see so many things happen over here that if he knew of, he would never let happen. Torture...killing... starving...so much death it would take at least twenty or so times our towns population to even begin to get close to the death toll, and it would probably still be hundreds short. Boys are dying out here. Sons...brothers...fathers...boyfriends... fiancées...husbands... everything you can possibly think of. And we are forced to see and watch it everyday. As I lay here, all I see is the mud walls of the trenches around me and the blackness of the sky above. The stars are there, but it can't possibly be Heaven. Because if there were a Heaven and there were a God, he would never, ever let this happen. I'm sure of that. Everything we have ever been taught is a lie. And I want to wake up, and for it all to be over. Because this has got to be a dream. Humans cannot possibly possess this much evil..."
Angel Harrison
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