On the Waterfront (Answer to blog Question.)

In the movie On The Waterfront the beliefs of the characters are very different when it comes to what the difference is between a traitor and a whistle blower, or a "stool pigeon" and an "informant on criminal activity" are. Terry Malloy one of the main characters is a former boxer, he works for Johnny Friendly who is the leader of the local union which is basically the mob. Terry is torn between telling the truth about Joeys murder for his new found love Edie and keeping it a secret for his own and his brother Charlies sake. In the beginning of the movie Terry covers for the mob because he believes at that moment what they did was the right thing, in a way by keeping this secret Terry was protecting himself, and his brother from getting in trouble because they were involved with joeys death. Also he felt that if Edie knew the truth she would never forgive him. Later on in the movie after Terry meets Edie and falls in love with her he decides he needs to tell the truth about Joeys death, even though he risks their relationship, he felt he needed to tell the truth for Edie's sake because it meant alot to her. Edie Doyle was Joey Doyle's sister in the movie. After Joey was killed she decided to enlist the help of the priest and investigate Joys murder herself because everyone was to scared to go against the mob, no one else was willing to help, even the police. Edie believed that the truth should be told no matter what it was. She convinced Terry to testify against Johnny Friendly in Joeys murder trial. When the mob found out about this they tried to get Charlie, Terry's brother to kill him. Like Edie the priest also believed that the truth should be told. Even though like Joey who had told on the mob wound up dead, anyone who told on them would also be in grave danger. Most of the characters in the movie wanted the truth and encouraged people to come clean, except the people in the mob. But most of the characters were to scared to go against the mob considering they knew what would happen to them if they did. But some brave characters like Terry told the truth and was in a way rewarded for it, but that truth caused him to loose alot including his own brother, who was killed because he refused to kill Terry. Even though the truth about Joey caused many losses there were also many gains. Truth beats lies and secrets.

I think a person is being a tattle tale when they tell on another for doing something very insignificant. Like if a person were to take your pencil and you then told the teacher. That would be pointless because you'll gain nothing from telling except maybe getting your pencil back and being made fun of by other students. When someone is truly speaking out against improper behavior it would be about something that really matter to you and hurts you alot. Like if someone makes fun of your race or religion. Compared to having your pencil stolen being made fun of for those things is very important because it could really hurt someone and should not be done. If something really matters to you then i think it should be reported, but if it matters to you and is really insignificant it should be dealt with by yourself because its pretty easy to do most of the time, or you could just ignore the problem completely.