Inherit the Wind

 

                                                         Discussion#2: Week 3

                                        Ideological Paper: INHERIT THE WINd

The 1960 film “Inherit the wind” is a fictionalized depict of an actual case on record, the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” trial, but it is in no way similar in events are character references. It is about a small town school teacher named Bertram Cates, who is arrested and brought to trial for his crime; being that of the teaching of his students about the theory of man’s descent from ape, derived from the Charles Darwin’s book on, “The Origin of Species”.

 Although the film, “Inherit the wind” places the school teacher, Bertram Cates up against the Town’s inhabitants who are followers of the religious leader Rev. Brown; who in actuality had Bertram Cates arrested for his teachings in violation of the Butler Act: An Act prohibiting the teaching of evolutionism and creationism, other than that which is within the Bible.

On the side of the prosecuting attorney set Matthew Brady the towns’ inhabitants favorite, who do not believe in the theories of Charles Darwin and considered himself as being a scholar of the Bible. Matthew Brady felt that there were no other answers to the existence of life then what was written in the Bible.

For the defendant set lawyer and also estrange friend of Matthew Brady; Henry Drummond, whose feelings were that it should be up to an individual to be able to decide what he or she wanted to believe in.

Lawyer and prosecutor argued their case, in the end Bertram Cates loses the case, but to the dismay of the prosecuting attorney Matthew Brady, Cates would only have to pay a meager fine of one hundred dollar.

 “Inherit the wind”, gives the view of an entire town and how one incident can pit side against side and in a court of law all the ugliness of pent up anger can over flow.

Bertram Cates wanted to give his student another point of view about the history of life’ in order for their minds to open up to possibilities other than a belief that was handed down to be truth’ and to seek out that truth for themselves and not to be afraid to ask why.