Who did the right thing?

Jack Bradley
English 1100
1-29-2018
Professor Young

Who Did The Right Thing?

In Do The Right Thing by Spike Lee there were a lot of scenes in which doing the right thing was in question. On the other hand, there were some examples of characters who were doing the right thing. I found a couple examples where a character did the right thing, but there were two characters in particular who maybe didn’t do the right thing throughout the whole script, but in  big moments stepped up to do the right thing. The two characters that I believe did the right thing in important moments in the script were Sal and Da Mayor. Sal had many points throughout the script where I thought there’s no way he’s doing the right thing or I questioned whether he did the right thing or not, but there are two examples that I believe can be connected to each other that showed that Sal was trying to do the right thing. On pages 49-50 there is the scene where Pino complains to his father Sal that he got made fun of by his friends, and during that exchange Sal says, “I’ve never had no trouble with dese people, don’t want none either, so don’t start none”(Pg 50). Then, at the end of the script after the riot and Sal’s pizzeria was burned down, Mookie comes back to Sal’s to ask Sal for his pay, and Sal yells, argues, and curses Mookie out, but in the end he gives Mookie twice what he owed him because he in some ways liked Mookie and like he said back on page 50, he never had no trouble with the people, and he didn’t want any either. I think that for the situation Sal was in, this was doing the right thing. The second character that I thought did the right thing throughout the script was Da Mayor. I think people get the wrong idea about Da Mayor because he was called a drunk and a bum throughout the script, but I believe that he did the right thing pretty much throughout the whole film. Even though Mother Sister hated him he would always try to talk to her and be nice to her which shows when he brought her the flowers. Da Mayor also saved Eddie from being hit by a car, tried to prevent the angry mob from burning down Sal’s or doing anything stupid, and even chased after Mother Sister and Jade after they were blown down the street when they were hit by the fire hose. Da Mayor may have been a drunk, but he had a tough life and all he did was try to do the right thing throughout regardless of how the people around him thought of him. It would be hard to question anything Da Mayor did as not doing the right thing.