Do The Right Thing

Kaitlyn Kirkpatrick
ENGW 1001
24 May 2018
Professor Young

Do The Right Thing

Do the right thing had a multitude of different themes going on throughout the play. The most obvious one was the difference between right and wrong. This theme was constantly occurring on who was right during all of he different scenarios. Some of these scenarios were easier to pick a side on to argue about whereas, some of the situations it was difficult to pick a way to argue about. Another theme that appeared multiple times throughout the script was the theme of Caucasian versus African American. Due to the fact that the neighborhood in the script is primarily African American with only 3 or 4 caucasian character there tends to be a bit of friction especially regarding a character named Pino. Pino is a Italian Caucasian man who works at his fathers pizzeria. Pino is very racist and likes to mock or pick on an African American man named Mookie who works there. These are only two of many themes that are happening. The setting is in Brooklyn and the scenes are constantly changing from a pizza parlor to a front apartment stoop to a a convenient store. The characters that are present at each location differ as well. The overall basis of the script though is that after an encounter with the police officers a person of color ends up dead. In this case it is a well known character named Radio Raheem. The citizens of the neighborhood create an uproar in light of his death by dramatically burning down the pizzeria that that was owned by the Italian family in the neighborhood.