On the Waterfront

A detailed Summary of On the Waterfront

Setting - The story starts out in the nineteen fifties in a typical small town exploited by the mob. The title On the Waterfront befits it well, for the town's only way of employment is working on the docks for the mob. The mob controls everything in this town; they are the union and the law. If anything accurs you don't know anything about it. Even if you were right there you were blind or D&D (Deaf and Dumb).

Situation - The situation in the town is that a very prominent man in the town was thrown off of the roof of his apartment building. Most of the people in the town were mystified by this because he as a good man that would not have many enemies. Most people would say he was a saint. His name was Joey. When the police arrive at the scene of the crime no one is cooperating with them because of the fear of the mob. Although some witnesses were almost family with the victim they will not be a canary or pigeon to squeal. This problem has been around for a while and some town members are starting to feel the guilt of their silence (with help from the priest) and decide to meet and talk about the problem.

On the docks work was on a first come first serve basis. Friends of the mob was given good easy jobs while the other work

Symbolism - Because of Terry's guilt, he decides to take care of the victim's birds. This conveys how Terry does have nurturing feelings with ambitions to change, unlike the mob. After he sings to the police about all the injustices done by the mob to the workers and the people of waterfront, a small child throws one of Joey's pigeons, now dead, and says, "A pigeon for the pigeon." This translates that people have the image in their mind that talking about situations caused by the mob will only bring trouble. Iddie and Terry both came from extremely different societies, however, they both were able to understand that the silence that was taken also causes trouble. It was time for the mob to be challenged. The philosophy that Terry grew up with is to hurt someone before they can hurt you. This is an exactly opposite example to how Iddie was taught to think: a pure example ofopposite's attract. In the beginning of the movie, Terry mentions how birds "have it easy- eating, sleeping, and flying around." In the End of the movie, the birds were killed and Terry was alive. This is a great example of irony. The birds were in a cage locked up when killed by the boy, symbolizing the fact that if Terry were to stay caged in the life of the mob, he would have ended up dead as well. He left the cage and sang, yet he lived. In any point in history, and in any society, there is a universal reaction to a person who speaks up with portraying all his or her feelings. When Terry finally decided to say what everybody else was thinking, they all finally realized that they need to be doing the same thing. However, the same idea goes along on the opposite

Some common words found in the essay are:
Dumb Situation, Iddie Terry, Final Outcome, Social Darwinism, Symbolism Terry's, , mob workers, typical town, docks mob, people waterfront,

Approximate Word count = 1116
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English