The Angel on the Ship
by Thornton Wilder

“The foredeck of the Nancy Bray, lying disabled in mid-ocean...

The figurehead of the Nancy Bray has been torn from its place and nailed to the forepost, facing the stern...”

When God appears to have deserted the scene, can false gods suffice?

Three exhausted survivors of a shipwreck in mid-ocean put this proposition to a test when they turn the figurehead of their broken vessel into the Great God Lily — and worship her.

Miraculously, a ship arrives on the scene.

In his Foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays , published in 1928, Wilder explained that almost all the playlets in the book are religious, “but religious in that dilute fashion that is a believer’s concession to a contemporary standard of good manners.”

He wanted to explore religious themes and questions without being preachy or didactic.

“Didacticism is an attempt at the coercion of another’s free mind,” he wrote, and that was not his intention.

In fact, it was often his intention in such playlets as this one to stand the biblical story on its head – to shake up the language, as it were.

He also said about his plays dealing with religious themes and stories that in “these matters beyond logic, beauty is the only persuasion.”

This short play is included in the collection Thornton Wilder's Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3-5 Persons .