heat of the night

 

In the movie The Heat Of The Night, Virgil is a black man from the north that is a detective. He was traveling south and was arrested and accused of killing a white man. The white man was one of the town highest status businessmen. Virgil was waiting in the train station early in the morning. The police found the body of the businessman. They went looking for who could have done it they arrested Virgil and brought him to the station. They started questioning him using some racially motivated speech. He then told them he was a police officer, which made the police more upset. The police chief then called Virgil's chief and it was communicated to them that Virgil was the top homicide detective they had. Virgil's started helping out with the case and continued to prove his worth by implementing things they had never done or seen. They arrested a couple of people and would have pinned the murder on them if Virgil did not stop them. Although Virgil was doing an impressive job working through this case he still experienced a large amount of racially motivated hate. There were a couple of times Virgil found himself getting almost killed by the people in the town. The police chief asked him to go home so he would die and Virgil would not go because he felt as if he needed to finish this to prove a point. Virgil later found out who killed the man and it was another one of the town's businessmen. This caused serious issues between the police chief and everyone else because he was starting to see Virgil's value for his work, not his color. I think that it would be very normal for the people in the south at this time to have the feelings they did about Virgil. Although I would have thought they would have started to change faster as he went on to prove himself. Something that surprised me is the community in the town was not changing their views on Virgil. Although the businessman's wife really liked and appreciated Virgil because he had helped the most on this case. It seems as if the people of the town were too busy with the cultural beliefs that had been ingrained in them their whole life that they could not see the good in Virgil. It is a large possibility that the people in this town were just so used to their beliefs and ways of life that they just could not see past vigil's skin color. To me, this feels wrong to see a person being treated the way he was after he pushed so hard and did so much for them. They just did not have it in them to be able to respect him without seeing his color and treating him accordingly. I feel the most change came from the police chief. In the beginning, he strongly disliked Virgil and throughout his time there he started to like him more and more. By the end of the couple-day investigation, the police chief respected Virgil and was appreciative of what he was doing for the town and himself. The main takeaway I have from this movie is not to judge a book and Virgil is the perfect example.