Do The Right Thing Essay

The film Do the Right Thing is set in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It begins with Sal, an Italian American, and his sons who run a pizzeria in a neighborhood where minorities live. Mookie, played by Spike Lee, is the pizzeria’s delivery boy who is working on the hottest day of summer which ends up being the same day everyone decides they are fed up with the subtle racism that goes on between races. This separation between races leads to Buggin Out, a frequent customer of the pizzeria, boycotting the establishment because there were no pictures of black people on Sal’s wall. This anger cause Sal and eventually Mookie to explode and react to the situation with violence. Sal’s anger leads to the death of an influential man in the community while Mookie’s anger leads to the destruction of Sal’s shop.
Mookie’s initial action of throwing the trashcan through the window of Sal’s pizzeria was done through impulse. I think Mookie did the right thing but not to the right people. I believe this because Mookie’s reaction did show that he was angered by the actions of the police but the police were not affected in any way from Mookie’s reaction. The police came right back to the same corner the fight had just broke out at and once they return they see Sal’s place burned down. Because Mookie acted on a whim he didn’t think about what would be reported in

When Mookie attacked the pizzeria it moved the crowds anger from Radio Raheem’s death and the treatment of the police, to Sal’s undercover racism. In “Why Mookie Did the Wrong Thing”, Natalie Hopkins writes “property cannot and will not ever equate to a human life” (Hopkins p. 2). Although we disagree on whether or not Mookie’s actions were right or wrong and what reasoning behind them, we do agree that a life should not be compared to a