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Inherit The Wind Analysis

Decent Essays

The decade of the 1920’s was a busy grouping of ten years in America. The power of women’s desire to vote won them suffrage while uncertainty sprouted from government actions such as prohibition and especially the Scopes Trial of 1925. Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s play Inherit the Wind is a depiction of this unsettling event that took place in 1925. The four main characters of the play are Bertram Cates, Rachel Brown, Henry Drummond, and Matthew Harrison Brady. The friendships between these four main characters are used to show that friendship is a powerful bond, and how the bonds protected Bertram Cates from a larger punishment in court. In the beginning of the play, friendships between characters are introduced and the audience is shown the strengths of these relationships. Cates and Rachel meet each other, while Cates is in jail after he commits the crime. Rachel is shocked by the way that Cates is responding to the situation and says “We live in Hillsboro, and when the sun goes down, it’s dark. And why do you try to make it different?... Why can’t you be on the right side of things?” (Lawrence and Lee 9). Cates then follows this by saying “Your father’s side” (Lawrence and Lee). Following these statements, the two characters embrace and part. This scene shows the friendship between the two characters, and how they are not in agreement in their positions in this incident but are still friends nonetheless. This positioning proves to be important to Cates’ escape

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