SENTINEL WATCH August 14, 2006 Issue

'GET BEHIND ME, SHADOW'

Frederick R. Andresen

NOTHING IS MORE DETERMINED than your shadow. You can't get rid of it unless you are totally in the dark—or totally in the light. The word shadow can imply protection, as in the Psalmist's reference to "the shadow of the Almighty" (Ps. 91:1). But often it suggests our human shadow, which always seems right there, somehow connected to us—so normal that we take it for granted.

This concept is personified in an amazing play, The Shadow, written by the Russian Evgeny Shvarts during Stalin's reign of terror in the late 1930s. It's a deceptively innocent portrayal, as dark suggestions usually are.

The protagonist, The Scholar, single-minded and naive, employs his personified shadow (The Shadow) to deliver a love declaration to The Princess he wants to marry. But The Shadow, jealous of his master's inattention, betrays him and takes The Princess for his own, gaining the throne and unfolding a disastrous chain of events.