What does a man need to do to get a warm meal? Or better, yet, a means of moving up? 

Moving up from? 

In the tension of a hard-day’s work with the reality of the possibility of leaving one’s station, onto that higher ground from pigeon telecommuting, from being plucked daily to physically toil – and in grueling fashion – on the shores, moving commercial goods to and fro, just to put a warm roof over one’s head; and a meal in one’s belly; and the maybe hope of a woman and child; where there is the sheltered comfort and security not known but knowable; represented by the glitz and glamour of the physical publication of celebrity, such as a Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe…it is in these “trenches” where the soul of man is revealed as that tenuously, precariously, balanced.

Where the imbalance, as is typical, is onto the that which resembles lower life, that acts in anxious reaction to the world and natural forces which propel its aim of surviving.

The struggle of life is that tacit in the film; the inexplicable complacency of vocation, amidst the American anthem of moving onward, forward…a manifest destiny of better than the working conditions which are more than displeasure; but unbearable to the memory and the mind’s eye, which nevertheless is present and existent daily in the millions…it is here where Terry Malloy, played brilliantly simple by Marlon Brando, has a choice to make…to make it good with he who outwitted to gain a dominant share of the authority over the longshoremen who just want to work; onto that morseling of a better taste of life; where the relaxation of nerves, away from painful injury or worse, is far removed; and the battle contested in keeping people in line, especially when there is a foul ball in the shoreline park; or to confess.

That foul play is presented centrally in the film’s narrative…where the reasonability of the worker who wants to avoid unnecessary burdens, who gets the picture to avoid brave heroics which serves no purpose but a vanity before God, is disputed. Disputed by whom though? The Catholic Father, cajoles the workers towards being truthful about the working conditions and the authoritarian control over the union and the selectivity of who is permitted to survive another day by granting work on the docks and therefore wages, honestly sowed, yet dishonestly permitted. To maintain an order among man which is loftier than animal life. This order is knowable as just, where mightiness is not identical with its harmonious reality of stabilizing peace on Earth.

It is in this position of honor that is universal among men. To choose to live more than the body. For glory? How can that be, amidst such a humbling meek brutal truth of missing a meal, possibly irreparably with the ostracism profoundly contained in the knowing of the control, if not possession, of the labor, by the boss and his subordinates, if not henchmen. Living in the presence of peril, must, then, be, for a higher calling. A purpose where a full belly is valued less than a higher spirit.

How difficult it is to be truthful. Because of the consequences of admitting facts, of possessing the mortal burden of the penalties. And yet, blind to men, that honest nobody appears to be a glorious somebody – to the Highest Spirit of all.

Divine Judgment and its eternal belief in man propels all stripes of mankind towards such encouragement, such courageous motivations, of experiencing worldly-blows in a way that the boxing den does not contend with.

Grade: A