Question

Read the excerpt from Section 2 of the Espionage Act, which was enacted by the Congress of the United States on June 15, 1917. Section 2 Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury or the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicated, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to, or aids, or induces another to, communicate, deliver or transmit, to any foreign government, or to any faction or party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States, or to any representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof, either directly or indirectly and document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, note, instrument, appliance, or information relating to the national defence, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than twenty years. How does this excerpt relate to the plot of the The Inheritors?

Answer 1

FRED JORDAN'S cell. Slowly, at the end left unchalked, as for a door, she goes in. Her hand goes up as against a wall; looks at her other hand, sees it is out too far, brings it in, giving herself the width of the cell. Walks its length, halts, looks up.) And one window—too high up to see out.

        (In the moment she stands there, she is in that cell; she is all the people

        who are in those cells. EMIL JOHNSON [who works at the courthouse],

        appears from outside.)

MADELINE: (stepping out of the cell door, and around it) Hello, Emil.

EMIL: How are you, Madeline? How do, Mr Morton. (IRA barely nods and does not turn. . . . EMIL turns back to MADELINE) Well, I'm just from the courthouse. Looks like you and I might take a ride together, Madeline. You come before the Commissioner at four.

A possible disadvantage to watching this scene, as opposed to reading it silently, is that viewers are

Answer 2

The correct answer is:

It strengthens the conflict by revealing the severity of the punishments that one convicted of spying will face.

The Inheritors is a play about an idealistic farmer´s granddaughter who stands up for the rights of Hindu nationals to protest at the college her grandfather founded, finding herself in prison for those actions.

The Inheritors was Glaspell’s act of resistance to the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1918 Sedition Act, both intended to empower the Wilson administration in dealing with internal hostile activities.