In the movie On the Waterfront there are mainly two views on "ratting" or being an infomant to the police. The mob members, mostly Johnny Friendly and Charilie think that squeeling is selling out your friends, no matter what excuse you come up with. Terry, on the other hand, thinks that when your "friends" are doing something you need to stop, you need to stop them. In the beginning Terry didn't think like that though. Through the movie all the way until the end Terry is first standing up for himself and then he stands up for the people around him, the dock workers. After Terry testifies against Johnny, the whole mob turns against him because what he did was their idea of a "stool pigeon".
I think that you need to tell the truth when the lies are hurting people. However, there are times when people are cruel and don't try to help anyone and are just looking out for themselves. The mob was like that in the movie. In the end when Johnny took everyone's guns away from them, he didn't do it because he wanted to stop hurting and killing people, he did it all for himself so that the police wouldn't find something incriminating. Tattling and trying to stop something wrong are just points of view. To the people who are exposed, they think its tattling but the people who are doing the "tattling", they are doing it because they feel what they are doing is right. In elementary school, you might remember teasing or being teased for being a "tattle-tale" and when we were kids, there wasn't such a thing as a "moral crusader". Kids think selfishly and that works for them, but we aren't kids anymore.
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