Quote 5
You
see, I haven’t really thought very much. I was always afraid of
what I might think—so it seemed safer not to think at all. But now
I know. A thought is like a child inside our body. It has to be
born. If it dies inside you, part of you dies too!
At the end of Act Three, while conversing
with Cates and Drummond, Rachel expresses her newfound appreciation
for freedom of thought. In doing so, she addresses one of the most
important lessons of Inherit the Wind. In the playwrights’
view, ignorance and fear combine to create conservative, fundamentalist
value systems, like the one we see in the Hillsboro townspeople’s
initial attitudes toward evolution. People cannot accept new ideas
if they are not exposed to new ideas. Authority figures like Brady
and Reverend Brown repress new, unorthodox thinking out of fear
that unconventional ideas might disrupt the social order that they
command. Over the course of the trial, Rachel overcomes this ignorance
and fear of individual thought and combines this transformation
with romantic feelings for Cates. This change in Rachel demonstrates
the power of thought and of love.
