Comparison Of Inherit The Wind By Jerome Lawrence And Robert E. Lee

Four people joined the defence team to represent Scopes in the trial. Scopes was being prosecuted for teaching evolution to his class. In the same year, before Scope’s arrest, a law was passed stating all teachings contrary to the Bible are unlawful. A few decades later, Inherit the Wind, a fictional theatre, was written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. It depicts the accounts of the “Monkey Trial”. Unlike the non-fiction, recorded trial of Scopes, the authors create a fictional story. The actual setting of the trial is different from the book, but yet keeps a similar theme. All this helps to make the theatre more intriguing to its audience. The first attribute that Inherit the Wind has is its genre. According to Jerome Lawrence & Robert Lee (1955), “Inherit the Wind is not history. It is a theatre.” (author’s note). A fictional theatre based on history and witness accounts to be exact. The actual Scopes trial was recorded by many court stenographers. Excerpts from transcripts are taken from day one through eight (Linder). The reason the authors wanted to change the genre is so they had control over setting which would in

The Scopes trial took place in Dayton, Tennessee, near the Cumberland mountains (Linder). A picture actually depicts the scene. The jury and court, including hundreds of people, stood outside in the smouldering heat of 1925 (Linder). In Inherit the Wind, the setting takes place in a smaller town, about 88 miles away, in Hillsboro, Tennessee. This theatre is set as not too long ago. The setting includes the courthouse and also its lawn. Most of the trial however was held inside the courthouse. With the setting being inside, it creates a more crowded environment. When Brady starts trying to yell out the books of the Bible over the noise of the crowd but to no avail (Lawrence & Lee, 1955, p. 102). It’s easy to picture the bustling, crowded