Final Writing Test - Inherit the Wind

 (Note: I capitalized “Evolution” because it would be unfair to capitalize the “Church” and not “evolution”.)


The play Inherit the Wind shows the conservative people of a small town, somewhere in the United States. Their life isn’t exactly exciting and basically consists in going to the church and believing in God; but when Bertram Cates, a young science teacher, starts teaching Darwin’s theory of Evolution to his students, the whole town gets out of its lethargy and protests against this “aberration”. The play, which is mostly about Cate’s trial, is a plea for freedom of thought. Many facts show it, the most important of which is Henry Drummond defending Cate’s right to believe in Evolution, but also Brady’s right to believe in the Bible.

During the play, Drummond is constantly pleading for the liberty of thought, speech and expression. For example, at the beginning of the trial, people are shocked to hear him swear, but he says that words are there to be used and he refuses to stop swearing. Then, his main arguments to defend Bert Cates are always about him having the right to think. Once in the play, he even asks Matthew Brady: “Can sponges think, Mister Brady?” Confused, Brady says that if God gave the sponges the capacity to think, of course they can; and Drummond carries on saying: “Mister Cates is asking for the same rights as a sponge! He wants the right to think!” Unfortunately, his message is not clearly understood by the audience. Later, the lawyer goes further and defends Darwin’s right to think and write about Evolution. He says that the scientist had the right to write On the Origin of Species, and that whoever wants to read it should have the right to read it and to talk about it. In short, he thinks that the Church shouldn’t condemn people for thinking freely and seeking concrete answers to their questions.

At the end of Inherit the Wind, Drummond surprises the public by defending Brady’s right to be a Creationist and to defend the “literal truth” of the Bible. It is obvious that he is in favour of the theory of Evolution – he says it himself many times – but the most important value for him is freedom. Therefore, even if he ridicules Brady’s blind belief in the Bible with his sarcastic remarks, he still respects his opponent’s choice to believe that the Earth and all the species living on it were created by God and that a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree... After Brady dies, Drummond insists that he was indeed a good-hearted man. When Hornbeck, the journalist, criticizes Brady and the townspeople’s point of view and says that they are simple-minded and ridiculous, the lawyer defends them as well as he defended Cates. Finally, Henry Drummond himself is a symbol: he represents freedom of thought.

In conclusion, it is obvious that freedom of thought – along with freedom of speech and freedom of expression – is the main theme of the play. Henry Drummond’s role in the story is clearly to tell the public that whatever their beliefs are, they must respect other people’s beliefs as well. The play encourages the people to fight for their ideas, but also to be open-minded and to fight to let the others express their own ideas. Voltaire, a French writer of the 18th century, once said something that represents very well the main message of Inherit the Wind: “Je ne suis pas d’accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu’à la mort pour que vous ayez le droit de le dire.”


(590 words)