nick89rs
03-08-2005, 06:30 AM
sorry i need to put this somewhere for liek 2 hours cuase my printer is broke and my email wont work, and i have to print it at school and this is the only way i can get it
Nick L'Etoile
Book Report
Law A/4
3-7-05
A Time To Kill
A Time to Kill was written by John Grisham. The story takes place in a town called Clanton, Mississippi during the late 1980's to early 1990's. The town was in a very rural part of Mississippi, and a very redneck place too. It was a very divided town, all the blacks kept to themselves and the whites kept to themselves too. There was a lot of hatred between the two races, and it just kept getting worse throughout the novel.
The main point in this book is about a black man whose ten year old daughter gets raped. The girl is almost murdered, and found in a river. The two white redneck men that are charged for the crime will probably get off free and without a care in the world. The black man decides to take the law into his won hands and kills the two men when they are on their way to court. The black man gets arrested and taken to jail. His lawyer tries everything in the book to get the trial moved because it would never be a fair trial in the white town they live in, but to no avail. With all the odds against them, they go to court and hope for the best.
The main characters in this book are Jake Brigance, a white male lawyer of mid twenties. He is married to his wife and has a young daughter. He is a very smart person and has great morals. He can see past the color barrier that mostly everyone else in the town can't. Carl Lee Hailey is the black man that is on trial for the murder of the two white men. His daughter, Tonya, is the girl that got raped. Ellen Roarke is an energetic girl from Boston who is still in law school. She wants to work for Jake really bad. She offers to work for free, and wants to help out as much as she can. She ends up helping a lot in finding key points for Jake's argument. Lucien Wilbanks is Jake's idol. He is an ex-lawyer and is who Jake learned from. Jake gets very inspired by Lucien's work, and uses his examples to help win the case.
The book starts out by the two redneck white boys driving around in their pickup truck, when they spot little Tonya Hailey. They grab the girl and rape her in the woods, then they beat her and try to hang her. The branch doesn't supports her weight, so they put her in the truck and bring her to a bridge. They throw her off and leave her for dead. They are then found for this, and are brought to prison.
When they are on their way into the courtroom, Carl Lee Hailey runs in and shoots them with his assault rifle that he got. Being a war veteran he had access to this kind of weapon. The police later find him at his house and they arrest him. While in jail, Jake Brigance, the struggling lawyer, agrees to try his case. Jake is approached by a young woman with some good information to the case. He then learns that her dad is a famous lawyer and she is in law school right now. She tells him that he should try to get a change of venue because of the no possible chance that Carl Lee could get a fair trial in the all white town they are living in. The judge declines every effort they make to change the venue of the court.
All the while that this is happening, the KKK in the town is getting really mad about it. They start off with small attacks, and then move to things that are way more destructive and out of control. One of the thing they do is go to Jake's house and burn a cross in his front yard. This gesture scares his wife and daughter a lot, and makes her mad at Jake for going through with the case, because she knows that no good can come out of it. Taking it way overboard, and showing the extent of all the racial problems in the south, the KKK try to blow up Jake's house. Luckily they are on to them and the sheriff catches them in the act. Jake jumps onto the person and beats them up badly. The police took him into custody. Next they attempt to set his house on fire, in which they succeed in doing. Luckily the family was not inside at the time of the arson. Another time they tried to assassinate Jake. When he was on his way out of the courtroom one day, a sniper tried to pick him off from the top of a building. Luckily the bullet missed him, and it hit a guard that was on the side of him. A fight broke out after a court session one day, and someone came up and stabbed Jake. The KKK did not care if you where white or black, but they only saw it as if you were for or against the advancement of the white race, and bringing down of the black race.
When the KKK burnt down Jake's house, it was a big turning point in the movie. When he got there in the morning he was trying to find his dog very hard. His colleague Mr. Vonner came up to him and tried to convince him that everything was a lost cause, and finally Jake found his dog. . Just after that they heard barking and the dog appeared, which symbolized something big. I think that it inspired Jake that nothing is worth giving up on, and if you believe in it then good things will happen.
This proved true because the next day in court when they had their closing statements Jake told a story to the jury. He told them every grim detail of what happened to little Tonya Hailey. This encouraged the jury to side with the defense, and then they said that Carl Lee Hailey was not guilty.
This book was very well written. In some parts it was over detailed, but in some spots it needed it. It would be hard to write a book about a trial and not include a lot of details. The book showed the real life examples of what black people faced in the south. There was nonstop discrimination, and they were never viewed fairly in the eyes of others. This was evident when the some of the jurors had their minds made up even after the first couple of days of court, without hearing the whole story. They were very biased in their discision making.
Nick L'Etoile
Book Report
Law A/4
3-7-05
A Time To Kill
A Time to Kill was written by John Grisham. The story takes place in a town called Clanton, Mississippi during the late 1980's to early 1990's. The town was in a very rural part of Mississippi, and a very redneck place too. It was a very divided town, all the blacks kept to themselves and the whites kept to themselves too. There was a lot of hatred between the two races, and it just kept getting worse throughout the novel.
The main point in this book is about a black man whose ten year old daughter gets raped. The girl is almost murdered, and found in a river. The two white redneck men that are charged for the crime will probably get off free and without a care in the world. The black man decides to take the law into his won hands and kills the two men when they are on their way to court. The black man gets arrested and taken to jail. His lawyer tries everything in the book to get the trial moved because it would never be a fair trial in the white town they live in, but to no avail. With all the odds against them, they go to court and hope for the best.
The main characters in this book are Jake Brigance, a white male lawyer of mid twenties. He is married to his wife and has a young daughter. He is a very smart person and has great morals. He can see past the color barrier that mostly everyone else in the town can't. Carl Lee Hailey is the black man that is on trial for the murder of the two white men. His daughter, Tonya, is the girl that got raped. Ellen Roarke is an energetic girl from Boston who is still in law school. She wants to work for Jake really bad. She offers to work for free, and wants to help out as much as she can. She ends up helping a lot in finding key points for Jake's argument. Lucien Wilbanks is Jake's idol. He is an ex-lawyer and is who Jake learned from. Jake gets very inspired by Lucien's work, and uses his examples to help win the case.
The book starts out by the two redneck white boys driving around in their pickup truck, when they spot little Tonya Hailey. They grab the girl and rape her in the woods, then they beat her and try to hang her. The branch doesn't supports her weight, so they put her in the truck and bring her to a bridge. They throw her off and leave her for dead. They are then found for this, and are brought to prison.
When they are on their way into the courtroom, Carl Lee Hailey runs in and shoots them with his assault rifle that he got. Being a war veteran he had access to this kind of weapon. The police later find him at his house and they arrest him. While in jail, Jake Brigance, the struggling lawyer, agrees to try his case. Jake is approached by a young woman with some good information to the case. He then learns that her dad is a famous lawyer and she is in law school right now. She tells him that he should try to get a change of venue because of the no possible chance that Carl Lee could get a fair trial in the all white town they are living in. The judge declines every effort they make to change the venue of the court.
All the while that this is happening, the KKK in the town is getting really mad about it. They start off with small attacks, and then move to things that are way more destructive and out of control. One of the thing they do is go to Jake's house and burn a cross in his front yard. This gesture scares his wife and daughter a lot, and makes her mad at Jake for going through with the case, because she knows that no good can come out of it. Taking it way overboard, and showing the extent of all the racial problems in the south, the KKK try to blow up Jake's house. Luckily they are on to them and the sheriff catches them in the act. Jake jumps onto the person and beats them up badly. The police took him into custody. Next they attempt to set his house on fire, in which they succeed in doing. Luckily the family was not inside at the time of the arson. Another time they tried to assassinate Jake. When he was on his way out of the courtroom one day, a sniper tried to pick him off from the top of a building. Luckily the bullet missed him, and it hit a guard that was on the side of him. A fight broke out after a court session one day, and someone came up and stabbed Jake. The KKK did not care if you where white or black, but they only saw it as if you were for or against the advancement of the white race, and bringing down of the black race.
When the KKK burnt down Jake's house, it was a big turning point in the movie. When he got there in the morning he was trying to find his dog very hard. His colleague Mr. Vonner came up to him and tried to convince him that everything was a lost cause, and finally Jake found his dog. . Just after that they heard barking and the dog appeared, which symbolized something big. I think that it inspired Jake that nothing is worth giving up on, and if you believe in it then good things will happen.
This proved true because the next day in court when they had their closing statements Jake told a story to the jury. He told them every grim detail of what happened to little Tonya Hailey. This encouraged the jury to side with the defense, and then they said that Carl Lee Hailey was not guilty.
This book was very well written. In some parts it was over detailed, but in some spots it needed it. It would be hard to write a book about a trial and not include a lot of details. The book showed the real life examples of what black people faced in the south. There was nonstop discrimination, and they were never viewed fairly in the eyes of others. This was evident when the some of the jurors had their minds made up even after the first couple of days of court, without hearing the whole story. They were very biased in their discision making.