Zachary Sherman Word count 1283 Do not copy; not an example of an essay we will write.
Ms. D Stevens
ENG-1A-093
4 November 2013
Not History: Inherit the Wind and the Scopes Trial
Playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee based their play Inherit the Wind on the 1925 trial of substitute teacher John Scopes, who stood accused of a violating the Butler Act, which forbade public schools from teaching any theory of humanity's origins that contradicted the Holy Bible. However, Inherit the Wind, as the authors write in a preface to the work, does not attempt to offer total historical accuracy. Despite this admonition, as Edward J. Larson writes in his book Summer for the Gods, Inherit the Wind has dominated the public perspection of the trial and its impact from the fifty years since its release (21). But how well does the play match against the actual history of the case? An examination of two of its primary characters, Henry Drummond and Matthew Harrison Bradly, reveals that its departures in fact are often extensive, and wildly alter both the circumstances and the personalities of the characters full-blown figures involved.
Henry Drummond is the defense attorney in Inherit the Wind, hired by the Baltimore Herald to defend the accused Bert Cates. Drummond is a self-described agnostic, portrayed by the authors as an aggressively pro-science legal genius who comes to fight an uphill court battle in defense of reason and justice (Larson 200-243). However, he is not entirely anti-religion; in the play, "he picks up the Bible in his other hand; he looks from one volume [Origin of Species] to the other, balancing them incessantly. He smiles, half shrugs. Then DRUMMOND slaps the two books together and jams them in his brief case, side by side" (Lawrence 129). Earlier, he defends his rival, Matthew Harrison Bradly, against the sardonic journalist E. K. Hornbeck (analogous to real-life reporter H. L. Menken): "You smart-alek! You have no more right to spit on his religion than you have to spit on my religion! Or my lack of it!" (125). Drummond fights passionately for the right of all people to be wrong, a die-hard enemy of bigotry in all forms -- including Hornbek's materialist, anti-religious bigotry.
Drummond is analogous to the actual defense attorney at the Scopes trial, lawyer Clarence Darrow. The historical Clarence Darrow seems unlikely to defend Brady's religion, yet likely to defend Brady’s right to practice it. Darrow was a lawyer. He was a pragmatist insofar as he believed the best way to maintain a reasonable populous albeit one prone to religious leanings, was to tolerate the practice of religion as long as it did not interfere with the practice of logic and reasonable pursuit of knowledge.
Looking at the facts, Inherit the Wind markedly softens Clarence Darrow's personality. As Larson writes, Drummond offers the liberalism of the 1950s (243) rather than the real-life attitudes of Clarence Darrow. The real man had little interest in truth; he sought victory above all: Larson denounces, in his description of Darrow's character, that he "mixed up Darwinian, Lamarckian, and mutation-theory concepts in his arguments, utilizing whichever best served his rhetorical purposes. He frequently appealed to science as an objective arbitrator of the truth, but would only present scientific evidence that supported his position" (Larson 72). Inherit the Wind goes out of its way to make Drummond into a staunchly liberal figure, an advocate for tolerance and science, fighting against the united forces of bigotry and ignorance, but To do so, however, it must conceal the facts that Darrow was both virulently antireligious and ruthlessly pragmatic in the courtroom. "In short," says Larson, "he was a lawyer" (71). On the other side of the coin, Matthew Harrison Brady parallels the historical William Jennings Bryan, who came to Hillsboro/Dayton to assist the prosecution in the Cates trial. Brady, throughout the play, is shown to be a narrow-minded and bigoted man, as evinced by the speech he delivers when he first arrives in town: “I come not to deliver a judgment on a lawbreaker or condemn a former man of God. I do not intend to cast this man down to the pits of Hell from which he can have no hope of redemption.” Brady’s tone is fanatical and he may appear in the above as a myopic man, as opposed to Darwin purely because it violates his literal interpretation of Genesis. The authors specifically have him refer to the North as an enemy, echoes to the American Civil War, the ongoing struggle over civil rights occurring when the play was written, and a sense of enmity between a rural, gentrified South and an urban North. On top of this, the authors infantilize him: he refers to his wife as Mother throughout the play (Lawrence 22, 102), and she warns him specifically not to endanger his health (Lawrence 23) as a mother would a child. In short, the Brady of the play is portrayed as bigoted, narrow-minded, infantile man, with undertones of Neo-Confederatism. Finally, Brady has all but a nervous breakdown on the stand as Henry Drummond soundly attacks him, turning his own Biblical literalism against him to win the argument and the case. Compared to the real William Jennings Bryan, Brady is comically evil and laughably inept, walking into rhetorical traps set up by the cunning Drummond. What is more, the character's motivations have been dramatically cut down: as Larson writes, Brady's objections to The Origin of Species were not purely rooted in Biblical literalism; he also feared it would have dangerous social implications. The real Bryan said this about evolutionism: "The Darwinian theory represents man as reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate -- the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak" (Larson 39). Brady feared that widespread belief in Darwinian evolution would lead inevitably to social Darwinism, a philosophy which he had spent his life opposing as a politician and a public speaker (Bryan, Larson 37-38). And finally, Bryan never had an embarrassing breakdown on the witness stand, nor was he handily defeated by an intellectually superior Drummond, something easily refuted by viewing the court transcript. The historical William Jennings Bryan bears only superficial resemblance to the fictional Matthew Harrison Bradly, the difference so noticeable that Gerald Gunther walked out of the play in disgust. To oppose the heroic intellectual Henry Drummond the playwrights fashioned a perfectly anti-intellectual adversary, the zealot Bradly, to be handily vanquished. Whatever their motives, the writers created a similar and yet crucially different simulacrum of Bryan, a convenient antagonist for their tale; unfortunately, as Clarke notes (244-45), the play has become a cultural touchstone, and supplanted a historical reading of the trial. Bryan, a complex man who did much good, may be remembered mostly by his clownish portrayal as Brady. As noted by Larson, Inherit the Wind defines how the Scopes Trial is seen in contemporary American culture (244-245). However, the play is emphatically not true to history; the writers admit as much in the preface to their work. This is made more obscure through even a cursory examination of two principle characters: Henry Drummond, representing Clarence Darrow, and Matthew Harrison Brady, standing for William Jennings Bryan. Both characters have been massively changed from their real-life analogues: Drummond has been revised from a virulently anti-religion, pragmatic lawyer into a liberal crusading against bigotry. Bryan has been changed from a social reformer and evangelical Christian who fought Wall Street as well as the spread of the Darwinian theory of evolution. Taken together, it can be safely said that the revisions to history made by Inherit the Wind are extensive, and neither Drummond nor Brady are true to their historical counterparts. Still, we enjoy the play and are pretty happy with the results.