The Great Debaters Character Analysis

Movies and entertainment outlets speak volumes about the current state of a nation’s culture. Cinematic creations in the United States allow small voices to be heard and controversial issues to be addressed. However, a repetitive and monumental issue continues to be addressed, yet continues to persist in our 21st century culture, racial inequalities. Since the inception of the United States, black men and women alike have been disenfranchised at the hands of the “white man” in America. Instead of continuing the conversation today, the issue is continually silenced referencing the successes and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century. Nonetheless, an unfortunate reality looms upon this great land; racially based systems and structures continue to exist in 2015 the in United States. This paper synthesizes three films focused on racial inequalities in different time periods. Separate but Equal (1991), Selma (2015), and Crash (2005) illustrate how influential the Civil War amendments are, while serving as an uncanny reminder of how the racial prejudices during the 20th century continue to exist in our great nation today. Needless to say our nation has made great strides, but still has a long way to go.

The play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, takes place in the town of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. This time in Salem, witchcraft was suspected of almost everyone in the town. Preserving one’s reputation becomes recurring concept throughout the play. The witchcraft accusations are usually made by people that have a biased view against others, which is why everyone tries to make sure their reputation looks well with the rest of the town. This concept is proven through the characters of John Proctor, Reverend Parris and Reverend Hale. These three characters go to great lengths to protect what the town of Salem thinks of them.

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, John Proctor, the protagonist, is a farmer in his middle thirties. The author gives little to no detailed physical description of him, but from Proctor’s speech, we can still picture him as a strong and powerful man who is able to keep every situation under the control, the kind of personality which earns him deep respect and even fear from the people in town. On the other hand, Abigail Williams, the antagonist, plays an inferior role as an orphan who has no social status in a place like Salem. Over the course of the play, John Proctor is absolutely awakened and transformed by Abigail Williams. In the end, he overcomes the crucible by releasing himself from his guilt of

The Great Debaters is an extraordinary and inspiring movie; it incorporated a rich story. The move is based on a true story; the story dates back to the 1930‘s. It was about four African-American students from Wiley College who are on the school’s debate team, throughout the movie we see the discrimination they faced in the South.

The movie, The Great Debaters, takes place in the 1930s and explores the struggles of three students from Wiley College’s debate team. The first character introduced is the youngest student from the team, 14 year old, James Farmer Jr. He is an ambitious young man who strives to live up to his father’s expectations. James struggles with fear throughout the movie. He is sheltered and does not understand the severity of the racial conflict of the time. This trait is evident in the film in two key scenes. The first is when his family is out for a drive and his father accidently hits a white man’s pig. James’s father is very cautious during this interaction and James witnesses the incident from the car. This interaction has a major impact on James and gives him a greater understanding of the racial conflict. The second incident occurs when James is unsuccessful in his first debate. When given other opportunities to debate, he questions himself and fears failure. This fear plays a role in the debate team’s future competitions.

has not yet learned how to truly harness the power of knowledge through action and assertion. James Jr. has seen the raving effects of racism all around him, and longs to live in a future where no one must be in fear simply because of the color of their skin. Other talented debaters on Tolson's team include fiercely independent student Henry Lowe, and Samantha Brooke -- the first ever female ever to join the Wiley College debate team. While most educators may not have recognized the remarkable potential of assembling such a disparate team, Tolson's unique vision truly set him apart from the pack as the team begins to experience a series of consecutive victories on their road to challenging Harvard at the National Championships” (Buchanan).

What are the most five important things that have happened to your character in his or her life so far?

Pride can become something that will lead a man to shame and destruction. In The Crucible this happened to one of the main characters, John Proctor, which also is the one of the Tragic Hero in the book. The Crucible is about when some town people in Salem was accused of being witches after four girls were found dancing in the woods. After 200 people were accused of being witches in 1963, 20 people were either hung or crushed by many stones. In the Crucible John Proctor, the tragic hero had a weakness as pride eventually forcing him to face a serious decision and suffering more than he should.

The witch trials in this play were based on actual events that happened in Salem in 1692. Arthur Miller’s 1953 The Crucible is a dramatization of the Salem Witch Trials. His reasoning for writing it was because everyone was hysteric about the Soviet Union and communism trying to make its way over to the United States. It was like a modern day witch hunt. In the play, Abigail Williams and a group of girls get caught in the woods. They were dancing and doing other things that puritan’s looked down upon. The girls were caught by Reverend Parris, and soon after his daughter became ‘ill’. The girls then started saying that witches came to them and told them to do bad things. They sent innocent people to hang. After studying Arthur Miller’s

Through thick and thin bestfriends are always there for eachother. In the novel The Contender Alfred Brooks struggles to become a contender and reunite with his best friend James. Alfred is a high school dropout and has a job at a grocery store that’s going nowhere. James, his best friend is also a high school dropout but he is messing with the wrong crew. Throughout the story, Alfred begins to train at Donatelli’s gym to become a boxer. Later in the story James, who has been doing drugs, goes to rob the Epstein's store , where Alfred works, and almost gets caught. At the end of the story Alfred finds James in a cave with a cut arm that was caused by the burglary. James asks Alfred for a fix but Alfred, the contender, takes him to the hospital

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, it takes place in Salem, Massachusetts during colonial America. Throughout the story a group of girls makes accusations a mass of people of practicing witchcraft, one of the worst crimes to commit during that period, and people are being sentenced to hang for denying witchery. In the Crucible there are many lessons that Arthur Miller wants to teach you. To me a lot of the lessons that were taught in this story are important but I feel like one of them is the most important. Arthur Miller demonstrates that one of the lessons implied in the story is people’s character and how it affects those people and others. Examples of character are Giles Corey, John Proctor, Abigail Williams.

Most of the discussion dealt with historical overview on slavery and how it pertained to today’s society. The audience was reminded early on in the discussion that race does exist in its consequences and that we must not overlook those consequences. The speaker at this portion of the discussion was a woman who seemed extremely fond of her topic. Her gestures and speech inflections were much exaggerated to the point where it almost drew attention away from her topic. It was just ironic to me how a Caucasian woman could speak with such “emotion” when she was never herself enslaved!

The Crucible is set in the seventeenth- century Salem, Massachusetts during the Salem witch trial. It starts of with Reverend Parris, a man very concerned about his reputation, accusing his orphaned niece Abigail Williams of taking part in witchcraft after his daughter is unconscious after dancing in the woods. A technique used by Parris is characterization, which utilizes the thoughts, actions and dialogues in the construction of characters. Arthur Miller uses characterization to build the character of Reverend Samuel Parris as arrogant , selfish, and deceptive.

In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller was based on the Salem, witch trials when the people of the town where accusing each other of witchcraft and those held for questioning would stand trial had a choice to be valor. In Miller’s portrayal of the ghastly, sickening inquiry of witchcraft many people in the 1690’s were people of the township were maintaining guard for their beliefs; while others of the community of Salem were cowards who took the easy out of the accusations they were on trial. The townspeople of Salem are going through a day people are courageous even in a way others could not be or were never suppose to be. Those characters display their courage in the town at the time of need, John Proctor is a selfless man when only stating

The Great Debates is a drama that was released in the year 2007, it is based on a real life story of an African American man named, Melvin B. Tolson. Academy Award winning actor Denzel Washington plays Melvin B. Tolson in the movie. Melvin B. Tolson was a professor at Wiley College Texas. In the year 1935, Mr. Melvin B. Tolson, motivates the students to join their school’s first debate team. The team made it all the way up to compete with Harvard in the national championship, furthermore, Harvard was known as the best. The debate team was a team of four students, three boys and one girl. However, in this true life movie actor Denzel Washington engaged in numerous good communication ethics in more than one scene (Washington, Black, Forte, Roth,