Bertram Cates Quotes

Part 1 - Inherit the Wind Character List
Bertram Cates - A twenty-four-year-old science teacher and the defendant in the trial. A soft-spoken and humble man, Cates has been arrested for teaching his students the theory of evolution from biology textbook. His outlook on human knowledge is skeptical, and he wonders about the nature of the universe.
IN DEPTH: As his jailer, Mr. Meeker, points out, Bertram Cates is not a criminal type. A quiet, unassuming twenty-four-year-old, Cates is innocent, naïve, and wondrous about the world—and he suffers emotionally as a result of the townspeople’s treatment of him. He struggles to stand up as an individual even as the crowd opposes his views and actions. Although he remains idealistic throughout Inherit the Wind, he often needs Drummond’s encouragement to persevere with his cause. Cates doubts himself at times, especially when Rachel pleads him to admit his guilt and beg forgiveness.
In several instances in the play, Cates displays the humanity of an open, forgiving mind, as do the other evolutionists and progressives. Ironically, forgiveness comes more readily to Cates than to his staunchly Christian neighbors—foremost among them Reverend Brown, whose fire-and-brimstone sermons led Cates to abandon the church.
This failure plagues him throughout his life and manifests itself during the trial. When Brady falls ill following his floundering responses to Drummond’s line of questioning, he deliriously spews forth the speech he had prepared for a possible presidential victory. Brady is a caricature of the real-life prosecutor William Jennings Bryan. Like Brady, Bryan lost three presidential elections and died shortly after the Scopes Monkey Trial. In Inherit the Wind, as in the national media in 1925, Brady’s / Bryan’s death symbolized the humiliation he suffered in the trial and the end of an obsolete brand of politics. Bryan