Inherit the Wind

A high school teacher in a small town in Tennessee is arrested and put on trial for telling students about evolution, which is illegal. Representing the state is Matthew Harrison Brady, religious Fundamentalist and celebrity orator. Representing the teacher is Henry Drummond, a famous defense attorney hired by a distant newspaper, the Baltimore Herald, to ensure an exciting trial. Denied access to any kind of expert testimony by a biased judge, Drummond calls Brady himself to the stand, exposing the hypocrisy of his Fundamentalism.

This play is based on a real trial from 1925, dramatized as a commentary on McCarthyism. As a play it’s pretty dry but is saved by the character of E. K. Hornbeck, a cocky and cynical journalist from show more Baltimore who speaks in verse while everyone else sounds folksy. As a commentary on McCarthyism I’m not sure it really works. As has been seen recently, many who profess to believe in freedom of thought and are concerned about government overreach are perfectly happy to weaponize it against others whenever possible and don’t care one bit about being hypocritical. The idea that a liberal’s rhetorical flourish could turn a modern-day populist into a laughingstock is itself laughable.

One thing I was really struck by in this reread, my first in several decades, is the fatphobia. Brady is constantly described as a large man, criticized and ridiculed for his overeating, and then he dies of it. What does that add to the story? Absolutely nothing. show less

Once again, I find myself reading a book at just the right time. I just found out that today (November 24) is the anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of the Species, which is the main cause of the trouble in the play.

This is a great read, and the way Lawrence and Lee set the timing of the play: "It might have been yesterday. I could be tomorrow," is so true, as there is a recent push by certain religious groups to teach Creationism in Science class.

But more than anything, Drummond's argument is about allowing people to think, and think for themselves, and how Truth is more important than Right; as this is exactly what the original Scopes trial, of which this is a dramatization, really boiled down to.

Also, I really show more enjoyed the character of Hornbeck, based on H.L. Mencken, although to my mind he reminded me of another newsman, Hunter S. Thompson, especially the way he treats Brady as the sycophants fawn over him.

Again, this is such a great read, and it stays relevant even today. show less

What makes _Inherit the Wind_ a memorable play is not that it skewers Christian fundamentalism - instead it goes after all of those who are too narrowminded to see an issue from another's point of view. This is demonstrated in the character of Hornbeck, a big city reporter who looks down his nose at the both the rubes of Hillsboro and the passion of Matthew Brady. This play is not a pro-evolution screed; rather, it is a testament to the importance of open-mindedness.

Overrated piece of political claptrap with thinly veiled characters that smears the reputation of some of the actual people it portrays. This is one of the books everyone seems to be forced to read in school in the United States. Maybe it's gone out of favor now. It's ostensibly a fictionalization of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" about the illegality of teaching evolution in Tennessee. It is really a dig at the then rampant McCarthy frenzy that was gripping the United States during the Cold War. I guess they made us read it because of its liberal cachet during the 60s and 70s. It really isn't a very good drama as literature goes, relying on its political and scientific goals to believe its bombast.

So what's so wrong with it? Its not really show more bad, its just not very good. I don't know why the writers just didn't write a play about McCarthyism or write a more factual drama about the Scope's trial. Why hide behind thinly veiled fictional names? I know why, so you can blow them up to be one dimensional cardboard cutouts and get away with it. If you had used their real names you would have had to put in the good AND the bad. All three real protagonists: William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, and H.L. Mencken, were important, and each in their own way, great men in their time. Each was also deeply flawed (aren't we all). The way the play portrays them is that Mencken and Darrow are the great good rationalist humanitarians and Bryan is an ultraconservative Bible-beating creationist bigot retard.

I'm no creationist but the Scopes Trial has always been given much more importance than it really had. The evolutionists actually lost and everyone claims it was a Pyrrhic victory for the creationists. The media jacked up its importance (it was the newspapers back then) because controversy sold not because they were the great defenders of rationality over religion.

Here's the real deal. Scopes never taught evolution to anyone - never ever. He was talked into standing trial as the defendant. Couldn't the ACLU find someone who had actually taught from the prohibited textbook? Scopes later became a Roman Catholic of his own volition. Clarence Darrow was a jury-rigging defense lawyer. He was an avowed agnostic not an atheist. He was also a champion of civil rights. H.L. Mencken, an avowed atheist, was a notorious drunk, racist, and antisemite and elitist who opposed the New Deal. He was also one of the staunchest First Amendment supporters and wasn't afraid to take on anyone in an intellectual dogfight for the rule of reason over irrationality. And William Jennings Bryan was actually a populist and pacifist who believed an inflationary monetary policy would jerk the country out of recession. He also was a Bible-based creationist. Sucks to be human, doesn't it.

Inherit the Wind is ultimately that, a lot of simplistic, not very well written, melodramatic, political hot air that tells us almost nothing about McCarthyism, Evolution, Politics, Press, or anything else. I hate red-baiters, I think creationists are crazy, and I think this isn't a very good play. show less

Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in which a Tennessee high school teacher was put on trial for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in violation of state law, remains a compelling courtroom drama. With a winning combination of wise and powerful legal arguments and wry humor, this classic stage play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee portrays an epic battle between science and theology. And given the Trump administration’s systematic diminution of science in its formulation of climate, energy, and environmental policies, Inherit the Wind has attained renewed relevance.

A movie that makes my Top 100 list—reading the script of the play was almost as good.

For those who have never had the fun of watching Spencer Tracy and Fredric March thunder at each other in black and white (my apologies, but I cannot countenance any of the three TV remakes *smile*), this is a story based upon the events of Scopes v. State of Tennessee, testing whether it was legal to prohibit the teaching of evolution in schools.

The broad strokes of the story line are close enough to the original trial that many folks simply refer to the main characters as Darrow and Bryant, instead of Henry Drummond and Matthew Harrison Brady. The details and dialogue, however, are punched up for better drama. And, quite simply, once we get to the show more courtroom, there is plenty of drama. Brady stands firm on his certainty that the Word has been revealed and he has interpreted it correctly. Drummond, faced with an unambiguous law, hostile crowd, and unsympathetic judge and jury, pursues his guerilla warfare, little by little picking apart his opponent's position.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading the play. You can sit and reflect about the events and arguments, or simply re-read the delightful sallies of Drummond's one-liner wit:

"If, in the beginning, there were just Cain and Abel, and Adam and Eve, where did this extra woman come from? ... You figure somebody else pulled another creation over in the next county somewhere?"

One of my favorite aspects of the play is the deliberate ambiguity as to whether Drummond is an exponent of secular or religious Humanism. Though the trial's official verdict is against evolution (as it was in reality), there is no doubt in the reader's mind which side won this battle. Had it ended with Drummond striding out the moral victor, it would still have been good. But, I think it was better that it ended with the realization that Drummond fought, not against the Bible, but for the right of a man to think.

"In a child's ability to master the multiplication table, there is more holiness than all your shouted hosannas and holy of holies." show less

This is the novelized Scopes Monkey Trial. My copy was written in play format. The Scopes Trial was the landmark case most people would say about teaching evolution in school. The real purpose of the case was to decide WHO controlled the schools, the local school board or the State. Evolution was just the vehicle through which control would be established. Of course, names and places were changed, but it would be obvious to anyone who has studied this case who the principal players were. Good reading if one is interested in the topic; if not, would probably bore you. There have been several famous movies made from this event with stars such as Jason Robards, Spencer Tracy, and George C. Scott. I like the non-fiction version best! 144 pages