Scopes Trial Analysis

Words: 462
Pages: 2

The louder details of the trial often hid the intricacies of the regional conflict of the Roaring 20s. America during this time, like much of its history, was dealing with severe turmoil in the North and the South, and these conflicts manifested within Darrow and Bryan consecutively. Evolutionism, Darwinism, fundamentalism, and antievolutionism were all huge points of debate and tension between the North and South, and these topics were brought to light and discussed out loud, in a legal, public setting within the Scopes Trial. Within the South, religion was the basic, fundamental foundation for society. It existed in the spheres “of golf, bridge, music, art, literature, theatres, dancing, tennis, clubs…It [was] the fundamental communal factor” of society …show more content…
It relied heavily on its foundation, on what it knew, and that knowledge and sense of familiarity came from religion and from what was then considered as old school values. The South’s ideology was quickly being taken over by the North’s younger generations, who pushed for the Jazz Age, for the New Woman, and who emphasized the growth of science and Darwinism. A cultural shift formed in the North and South, and it rooted itself in the men who represented the basis of the Scopes Trial. Bryan was the epitome of the South, a man who held his Bible close to his heart and who refused to back down to the up-and-coming generations of the North. Darrow was the complete opposite and he, in contrast to Bryan, represented the North as a place where religion was not the main, number one driving force of society. Instead, the North was urban, was a mix of cultures and generations, and was a place where evolutionism and Darwinism could grow without the same fear of KKK intervention that existed in the South. Bryan and Darrow took their childhood mentalities of the South and North consecutively and personified