Final Literary Essay

How big of an impact can a play have?
By JoséEve McCarthy


The first few words pronounced in the play I saw last October at the Segal theatre are what made the whole three hours worth watching. The first sentence in Inherit the Wind’s script explains perfectly why it has been interpreted so many times in so many towns. "What you are about to witness could have happened any day ; today, tomorrow or yesterday. This story could have taken place twenty years ago or in twenty years, " is my summary of the play’s introduction, pronounced on stage at the Segal theatre.

Inherit the Wind, a play about evolutionism versus creationism, could have been just like any other play, conveying no message in particular. It could have been written by Jerome Lawrence’s desire to entertain and make people laugh or a dramatic play, written to make the audience cry and feel for the characters, but it was none of those.
In fact, Inherit the Wind is a touching play about the trial of a man put in jail for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to his high school students. The action takes place in the United States in the 1950’s. At that time, the country was much more conservative than it is now and the creationism theory was what students would learn no matter what their nationality, religion or opinion. Everyone had to follow the Bible. So, every single child was supposed to learn and believe that God created the earth, humans, animals, plants, etc., within seven days… However, even with a law against it, one science teacher decided to tell his students about Charles Darwin’s theory. The town’s people became disgusted and furious. Of course, the man had other problems. He was also dating the pastor’s daughter, who strongly believed in the theory found in the Bible and was worried he’d be sentenced to years in prison. She begged him to admit he had made a mistake and to plead for forgiveness, but he refused. He felt his cause was important enough to be heard of and to be brought to court. Unfortunately for him, numbers were not on his side and his girlfriend felt torn between the man she loved and the whole town’s beliefs as well as her own.

Jerome Lawrence, the playwrite of Inherit the Wind based this story on a real one. He created fictional characters but tried to stay pretty true to the original story. About thirty years before publishing his script and showing the first presentation of his play, there had been a real case in the States where a man had been brought to court for teaching the theory of evolution to his adolescent students. Apparently, Jerome Lawrence used this event to write a dramatic play to criticize the Senator McCarthy and his McCarthyist movement present in the United States at the time. (I just had to plug that in somewhere because it’s my name!) The McCarthyists did not take into consideration anyone’s opinions other than their own.

To Jerome Lawrence, the importance of his play was not about portraying the trial of one particular man who broke the law by speaking against a religion, it was about portraying someone who dared to speak his mind. That’s why this play can be interpreted anywhere at any period in time. Freedom of speech is an important value which should overpower religion and science at all times.


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