CPL310
10/11/2004
Back to Inherit the Wind
Brady:
-- made into kind of a prophet
-- has a very big ego
-- "If it's good enough for Brady, it's good enough for me"
-- expert on the Bible, which proves to be his undoing
-- self-appointed prophet
-- passed up by "progress"/technology (radio station/national press)
-- his death is foreshadowed
-- heat (historically true), desire for food, loses argument with Drummond during cross examination and then is ridiculed (this is not historical)
Drummond:
-- "Right to think" is on trial
-- the law (banning teaching of evolution) is on trial
-- seen by the people as a devil
-- likes "progress" (page 93)
-- birds lose their wonder (like the anti-fairy tale in Woyzeck)
-- God plagues us with the power to think (see Prologue to Faust)
-- page 109 Golden Dancer; that's all I ever need and I'll be happy; that's like Faust giving up striving
-- at the end Drummond picks up Darwin and the Bible, weighs them in his two hands and puts them both in his satchel
-- when Drummond talks about things, he's announcing and explaining what the action on the stage shows
Hornbeck
-- Mephisto-type
-- horns = devilish; beck = beckoning
-- speaks in verse kind of; his lines don't go all the way across the page
-- sneers politely; wonderful contempt (opposites)
-- page 33: he's pure extremes and cynical and still paradoxical opposites
-- later he's eating an apple and makes puns on the creation story
Cates
-- points out that even if creation took longer than 7 days it's still a miracle
-- page 54: Cates was just asking questions; he wants the right to think; he's "Scientific Man"
Rachel:
-- torn between her father and Cates, between her traditional faith and the new ideas