Enemy of the People

Enemy of the people was a great play with a great moral stance. I may not have agreed with his final choice, but he does make a stand at the end, and that is more than most people can say. The play starts out by showing a town that makes all their money off precious springs of water. The springs bring many tourists into the town, and are making the town a lot of wealth. The doctor is one of the main characters that make a sad discovery; the town springs have deadly bacteria contaminating them, which is making the town sick. The doctor’s friends, who write the towns newspaper agree with the doctor and decide together they need to publish the information to warn the town. When the doctor’s brother finds out about the discovery he is horrified. The doctor’s brother is the mayor and knows once this discovery is out the town will lose all of their income. The newspapers get threatened by the mayor, and the townspeople turn against the doctor and his family and deem him an enemy of the people. By the end of the play the doctor’s kids have gotten beat up at school, he and his daughter had lost their jobs, and they had been run out of their home, but he refused to leave town. The doctor refuses to give in to the peer pressure and do what is right, he stands by his family and teaches them “the strongest man is the man who stands alone”. I almost do not agree with the moral of the story. I understand the point of it, and see what they are trying to get across. But I do not agree with him keeping his family in the same town, if that water was so dangerous why did he keep his family there. The character I most related to was his daughter. She was a motivated young girl who almost saw the world in right and wrong. She understood what was right, and valued family as a priority. She was often ridiculed with her father as she would support him. She was often the hard head and ready to defend what was right, even when everyone, including her mother was telling her to stay out of it. The common place for a girl was to serve the men of the house, but she saw the importance of her view and stood by it. I also often agree with my father, and we see eye to eye on a lot of things that people often disagree with us on. We understand the world is not a pretty thing, and take it head on.