Inherit the Wind Name:

Essay Date:Humanities’ Teacher Name:

Directions: Choose ONE of the following topics and craft an essay response, creating a thesis statement and specific support details and a conclusion. 5 paragraphs = minimum. You must show evidence of prewriting. See next page 3. Your final draft should be typed, double spaced, titled and spell checked! Use a least three quotations properly cited as part of your evidence.

How does Brady’s character relate to the idea of hubris, or pride? How is his character tragic?

What is the significance of the playwrights’ description of the setting of the play? What does it say about their attitudes toward Southern fundamentalism?

What purpose does Cates and Rachel’s romantic relationship serve in inherit the wind?

What is the fundamental conflict in Inherit the Wind? Discuss the ways in which the playwrights support this theme through their characters and motifs.

Why do the playwrights imply, in their note preceding the play, that the themes of their play are timeless and universal? What relevance do these themes have today?

How does Melinda and Howard’s interaction in the first scene of inherit the wind foreshadow the play’s main theme?

Discuss the historical context of Inherit the Wind in terms of the Scopes trial and the rapidly changing society of the United States in the 1920s.

How does the play speak to the struggle of the individual versus larger society? What message does it contain about the power of the individual to change society?

Outline the various techniques Drummond uses over the course of the trial to undermine Brady’s literal interpretation of the Bible. How does Drummond finally humiliate his opponent?

This is an example of a properly cited quotation from the novel. Notice where the quotation marks are and where the final period for the sentence is.

“You see, I haven’t really thought very much. I was always afraid of what I might think—so it seemed safer not to think at all. But now I know. A thought is like a child inside our body. It has to be born. If it dies inside you, part of you dies too!” (Lawrence and Lee 52).

More Topic Options

1. What role did the media (both newspapers and radio) play in the trial? Compare this to the role of the media in recent trials or congressional hearings. ( Monica Lewinsky, O.J. )

2. In what ways has the concept of evolution become part of an accepted way of looking at and explaining change? Give examples from the fields of social science, communications or economics.

3. Who has “inherited the wind” and why?

4. Discuss the issue of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Use the recent decision of the Arizona Board of Education to include Evolution in the state science curriculum.

5. Compare Henry Drummond to Matthew Brady. What motivates them? What attracts people to them? What can you conclude about their characters in this play?

1. “Right has no meaning to me whatsoever,” Henry Drummond declares. “Truth has meaning -- as a direction.” Apply this distinction between the two systems of value (right and truth) and Inherit the Wind itself. In what sense can a work of literature be right or wrong? In what sense true or false?

2. The journalist E.K. Hornbeck describes Cates’ trial as “persecution of the educated.” What do you think he meant by this statement? Do you agree or disagree with his opinion?

3. Like most of the residents of her small Tennessee town, Rachel Brown sees a person’s beliefs and actions as being either right or wrong, Bert Cates, however, tells her that it isn’t as simple as that -- even an absolute like twilight is relative to one’s geographical position: Do you think that right and wrong are absolute or relative? Why?

4. Read the article “Pondering Why Do We Exist?” Discuss the author’s theme of ‘Religion and science should not be enemies’, and incorporate the storyline of Inherit the Wind.

Name:Pre Writing: (required!)

Catchy Opening Line =

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Thesis =

paragraph 2 should contain THREE pieces of Evidence and Commentary =

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paragraph 3 should contain THREE pieces of Evidence and Commentary =

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paragraph 4 should contain THREE pieces of Evidence and Commentary =

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Conclusion=

Clincher =