Socratic Method of Questioning in "Inherit the Wind."

It is a truism, repeated in many crime shows as well as by many lawyers, that a good lawyer never asks a question unless he or she knows the answer to the question, much like the famous Greek teacher and philosopher Socrates. The method of Socratic questioning is thus one in which the lawyer or the instructor professes ignorance of the topic under discussion in order to elicit an engaged dialogue with students or witnesses, with a directed answer or rhetorical destination in mind. The questioning person feigns ignorance about a given subject in order to elicit another person's fullest possible knowledge of the topic under scrutiny -- or lack of knowledge, in the case of the play "Inherit the Wind."

In the play "Inherit the Wind," the defense attorney Drummond seems to engage in an apparently risky tactic. Drummond calls the...
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