Talk:A Time to Kill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to narrative novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions. | ||
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class. | ||
| Mid | This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale. | ||
 |
This article has an infobox template in need of a Cover! (prefer 1st edition) | ||
|
Assessment comments
|
|||
Good god, someone PLEASE add links and colour to the plot summary! My poor eyes! --82.44.213.242 (talk) 11:30, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
It's Clanton, not Canton. --65.188.140.112 (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Premeditation
The plot summary at present omits the extremely strong element of premeditation.
It's made pretty clear that Carl Hailey plans the killing very carefully, and believes that his friend Jake Brigance will get him off the charge, just as the same lawyer achieved a not guilty verdict in a trial where Carl's brother Lester had killed another ne'er-do-well. Grisham goes to great lengths to cut off all traditional channels to exoneration. Carl discusses his plans with Jake, and Jake takes the plans seriously enough to discuss them with Sheriff Ozzie Walls.
Carl could use a revolver or a knife, but instead he calls in a favor from an all-too-willing friend, a former Vietnam War buddy whose life he saved, now a very successful pimp over the border in Memphis, and asks for a specific form of weapon: an M-16 Carbine, fully automatic. The buddy is able to obtain the weapon easily, and gives it to him free of charge. Throughout this, Carl's brother is a witness and (it would be difficult to argue otherwise) an accessory.
In the event, Carl botches the killing. In one of his first bursts, he accidentally catches the Deputy who is escorting the prisoners from the court room. Although he quickly gets out of the way he ends up with one leg amputated below the knee.
Carl takes great relish in the killing, laughing maniacally as he kills the two rapists, but he is obviously quite sane and acting in a way that would be difficult for any father to condemn. This engages the reader directly with the central question: are there murders that can be excused, not by reason of insanity, but on purely moral grounds?
Against this, Grisham weighs the enormity of the crime Carl is avenging, and the racial context. And because he's a writer as skilled as was Dickens in expressing the zeitgeist through fiction, it works splendidly.
Our plot summary probably needs to capture the ambiguity that Grisham puts into this work. I don't think it does so yet. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:21, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
