Essay Comparing The Scopes Trial And Inherit The Wind

The setting of the Scopes Trial and Inherit the Wind have both similarities and differences. The Scopes Trial took place in Dayton, Tennessee (“Tennessee vs. John Scopes,” 1925). Dayton is a town that normally wouldn’t have been found on a typical map. It is small, quiet, and would be considered insignificant if not for the historical event that took place there in the summer of 1925: the Monkey Trial. Likewise, the setting of Inherit the Wind features a sleepy town in the middle of summer that had never been the center of attention in all its years of existence (Lawrence & Lee, 1955). However, the name of the town is not Dayton. It is called Hillsboro (Lawrence & Lee, 1955). Additionally, while the Scopes Trial took place in 1925, Inherit the Wind does not have a specific date attached to its setting. This gives the story a feeling of timelessness; appropriate since the theme of Inherit the Wind is still applicable today. While the setting in many ways stays the same, it is easy to see the changes that the authors of Inherit the Wind made while writing the story

Another aspect of the Scopes Trial that the authors transformed was the genre.

However, “Inherit the Wind is not history,” (Lawrence & Lee, 1955, p. 1); therefore, it should be classified as fiction. Historical fiction, perhaps, but fiction all the same. The writers of Inherit the Wind freely admit from the first page of the play that the following story, while it is rooted in the true events of the Scopes Trial, should not be read as an actual occurrence (Lawrence & Lee, 1955). Even though the focus of both are similar, the genres they are classified in are in fact opposites, showing once again the transformations that the authors