Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Literature as a reflection of society
Literature as a reflection of society
Literature and society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Literature as a reflection of society
Classics Novel Essay The novel Inherit The Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee is a book about a trial that goes down in the little town of Hillsboro about a teacher who broke the “Butler law” (a law that prohibits teaching evolutionary theories in public schools). The townspeople are very excited because because three-time presidential candidate, Matthew Harrison Brady is coming to town to join the district attorney. The town is so excited for this that they had a carnival like picnic with hot dogs, cotton candy, and lemonade just to celebrate Brady coming to town. When everyone crowds into the courtroom the tensions rise when Brady and Drummond (Cates attorney) start to bicker over everything that they bring up. The trial really starts …show more content…
For example, Brady and Drummond make up the whole novel by politicly battling each other to fight for their defendant while Cates is the one who caused all of this controversy between Brady and Drummond because he caused the crime for them to even be in the courtroom together. Brady is the main protagonist in the novel because he sets the whole plot line by making the townspeople throw a picnic for him to the townspeople hating him when he turned his back on him at the end of the novel. At the beginning everyone loves Brady because he is three-time presidential candidate and is coming to their town to be involved in the district attorney but throughout the story he does different things that lead to him being hated by the end of the novel. When everyone is praying in the courthouse he quotes from the Book of Proverbs “He that troubleth his own house… shall inherit the wind. When he says this you think back to the title of the book, Inherit The Wind and this shows that every word the author uses means something in the novel. Later in the novel Brady is called up to the witness stand and is and is questioned by Drummond, when he is questioned he gets exposed by Drummond himself. Through the questioning Brady admits that he did not read Darwin’s Evolutionary Theories. He turned from a strong, confident man to a pathetic fool and the townspeople hate him now for lying
Reverend Jeremiah Brown - Hillsboro's minister. He is a hard- hearted man who feels no qualms about convincing the town to condemn Bert Cates and his daughter as incorrigible sinners.
...his seemingly routine case of fornication and premarital pregnancy proved to be significant for early American legal history. The unfolding of this story and the legal changes that it brought about makes evident that by the end of the seventeenth century, The Eastern Shore had shaped a distinct legal culture. The characters involved in each case also revealed the extent the powerful players were able to shape the law to their own self-interests. The goal of the powers to be was to protect property interests, protect personal reputation and liberty, and to maintain social order.
He was a mysterious unknown figure in the shadows; a slithering serpent in the courtroom. The defense attorney for the Scopes Monkey Trial was a cunning man. Clarence Darrow had difficulty defending his client, John T. Scopes, against his opponent, William Jennings Bryan. To everyone’s surprise however, he proved that he could prevail, even if he was under pressure from the world around him. Though Scopes was found guilty under Darrow, he surprisingly only had to pay a fine of one hundred dollars. With such a minor sentence, Darrow is said to be the person who actually won the trial. In the play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the character, Henry Drummond, parallels his real-life counterpart, Clarence Darrow, through intelligence, bitterness, and determination.
The Scottsboro Trials, Brown v. Mississippi, and trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Words have a way of changing the way we view the world. They can completely alter our perception of what is true and what is false. Take the tale of Skidmore and Manchester, as dictated in the story ‘The Curse of the Poisoned Pretzel.’ The way the author portrays the character of Skidmore shows just how easily words can change how we see someone by making you believe that Skidmore is guilty of his brother‘s murder, without ever formally saying so.
History is consistently used in films as a technique to teach the values and morals of events that occurred. But what’s the point in teaching history through films when they are terribly fictional? In films, the director finds the best scheme to intrigue their audience only by changing the actual event to satisfy their interest. This is true for Stanley Kramer when he made the history of John Scopes and his “monkey trial” into a film called Inherit the Wind. Kramer knew the exact stereotypical “Hollywood history” his audience enjoyed. The trial itself had a series of conflicts, the main one being evolution vs. religion. Yet there was also a series of tensions throughout the movie, including the argument between individual vs. society. The same themes from Inherit the Wind can also be seen from the actual “monkey trial” event in Dayton, Tennessee. It is sometimes said that truth is stranger than fiction and according to this film, truth is also stronger than fiction. Inherit the Wind ignored the true dramatic moment, which is essential to the actual trial that happened in Dayton, Tennessee. Kramer even portrayed his own opinion of this trial in this film. The truth was so distorted in the film so now the argument is not individual vs. society or evolution vs. religion but history vs. fiction. Inherit the Wind is set in the little town of Hillsboro when Bertram Cates (played by), a biology teacher, was thrown into prison for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Two famous lawyers were behind this case, Henry Drummond (played by) as the defender and Mathew Harrison Brady (played by), as the prosecutor. Mathew Harrison Brady who was “voted 3 times for a presidential candidate” was sent to Hillsboro is carry out the job as a prosecutor for this trial. As for Cates, a journalist from Baltimore Herald by the name of E.K. Horrbeck willingly provided a lawyer named Henry Drummond for him. Horrbeck was interested in the Cates, expecting to make big bucks from this big “media” case. The two opposing lawyers, Drummond and Brady, were Kramer’s two main characters, both with different opinions on how humans arrived on earth. Drummond supported the evolution theory, while Brady, the creation theory. In this film, Kramer distorted the facts of the actual trial to make this film more of a drama than a history documentary.
The story “Inherit the Wind” holds many themes which are revealed in many ways throughout the story. It is important to know the different themes of a story so there is a better understanding of the book. Appearance vs. reality, the importance of free thought, and man vs. society are few of the major themes that are revealed more than once throughout the story.
In Inherit The Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is about a big trial in a small town, and a controversial Creation versus Evolution debate. There are many characters with flamboyant and powerful personalities. Among them are: Matthew Harrison Brady, and Henry Drummond. Although all of these influential people are powerful, not all of them have the same amount of power, not only over other people, but over themselves as well.
In the skillful novel, "How To Read Literature Like A Professor" by Thomas C. Foster, there is neither a protagonist nor antagonist. As a whole, the novel gives insights on how to pick up signs of symbolism, irony, and many other hidden details that are buried within the words of literature. Foster refers to many classis novels by classic authors to demonstrate the use of logic in writing. The novel is extremely educational, leaving many insightful questions and interpretations to the reader's opinion.
In the novel Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer by John Grisham, the reader is introduced to Theodore Boone, a kid in body but a lawyer at heart. Theo does not play sports, nor does he have a very active social life, instead he tutors underprivileged children and provides (to the best of his own knowledge) advise to others who do not have anybody else to turn to. The novel Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer centres around a high-profile murder case between the Strattenburg Districts Attorney’s Office who is representing Mara Duffy versus her husband Pete Duffy. In the eyes of the prosecution, Mr. Duffy sought to claim the one million dollar life insurance plan his wife had, therefore he h a robbery gone bad. In the book Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, the author John Grisham uses an in-depth usage of conflict, use of diction within the texts and the detailed use of static and dynamic characters to entice the reader.
Henry Drummond is an acclaimed criminal-defense lawyer and recognized agnostic, so how could a man such as this respect and appreciate the life of the fundamentalist Christian Matthew Harrison Brady? Throughout the play Inherit the Wind Drummond demonstrates that though his opinions are much different than Brady and many of the townspeople of Hillsboro when it comes to religion, he is able and willing to respect these people’s values and beliefs. After being told of Brady’s death, Drummond’s respect for the man only seems to intensify. Despite Drummond and Brady’s evident past concerning both their old friendship and contrasting views on religion, Drummond still has a fair amount of respect for Brady, and though this does not affect the trial, it does affect the play.
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, contains many profound characters. The townspeople intrigue the reader because they gradually evolve throughout the book, as would any solitary character. In the beginning of the novel, they are generally rigid and judgmental towards Hester, because she has committed adultery. Throughout the novel, they slowly allow Hester and her daughter into their community, but still look at them with suspicion and doubt. Finally, in the end of The Scarlet Letter, the town forgives her of her sin, and she cautiously finds her place in society. Hawthorne uses the strict Puritan townspeople as a criterion by which all societies can be measured. The townspeople, as with any individual character, possess a certain depth that develops with knowledge.
There are many devices within the craft of writing that writers use to help them convey their messages. Among these include what characters they use and how they act, what setting they put their characters in, what types of symbols are use, and many others. They can go even farther into each section with how much information they give us, or how much they make us fill in with our own interpretation or imagination. The writer's choice of characters is a main part of the story, for it is these people that "tell" the story and which we relate it to. The characters' descriptions and their actions are what we picture in our minds. Although they need the other devices to complete the story, the authors use of characters can be what makes or breaks the story. There are many different types of characters that writers can use to help them distribute their message. Robert Frost uses nature as a character in his poem "Once By The Pacific," while Shirley Jackson uses the members of a small town to tell her story in The Lottery. While each is different, they both serve their intended purpose - to tell us a story.
A very common saying is “Don’t judge a book by its cover” which essentially means that everything is not always as it seems, there is usually much more to the story than what meets the eye. Death of a Salesman and “The Cat’s Table” both involve major elements proving that not everything is black and white, including setting, point of view, and symbolism. All of these crucial parts of literature help in proving that there is always more to a story, and that people do deserve the benefit of the doubt.
...and through an unfolding of events display to the reader how their childhoods and families past actions unquestionably, leads to their stance at the end of the novel.