69 pages • 2 hours read
John GrishamThe Street Lawyer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Personal Privilege and Responsibility
Grisham presents his audience with two opposing views of moral responsibility: An individual should only take care of themselves; and every individual is responsible for every other individual, including themselves. Michael’s family’s approach to life is precise, fixed, and prescribed. “Work hard and make plenty, and somehow society as a whole [will] benefit,” as Warner says, is an easy mantra to follow (295). The rules are simple, and the followers do not have to worry about how society will benefit or even whether society benefits at all. By embracing this philosophy, the Brocks are claiming that they have no moral responsibility to anyone but themselves. Drake & Sweeney personify the same ideology: “[The] firm [preaches] pro bono to all its associates, but the free work had damned well better not interfere with the billings” (67). With this mentality, Drake & Sweeney does not make public interest law a priority and certainly not with altruistic motivation. Michael admits to Mordecai that Drake & Sweeney does not even encourage active participation in the DC Bar Association; they are too busy billing hours for their own clients to be part of a greater community. These self-centered views emphasize the age-old dictum that survival depends on every man taking care of themselves, but they also assume that every person is capable of and has the resources to take care of themselves. Implied in this individualistic philosophy is that anyone who works hard and perseveres can be successful and self-sufficient, regardless of their life circumstances.
Mordecai stands for the opposite approach: Those who have the means are responsible for those who do not. This philosophy is more difficult to follow because it requires a person to grapple with their own privilege or lack of privilege, as well as uncertainty in their own and others’ lives. Mordecai explains to Michael why the individualists are wrong in thinking that anyone who tries hard enough can succeed: “[T]he homeless have no voice. No one listens, no one cares, and they expect no one to help them. When they try to use the phone to get benefits due them, they get nowhere. They are put on hold, permanently. Their calls are never returned” (87). Because people without housing are often socially invisible and deemed unworthy of time or energy, those who have power and resource through privilege have a moral responsibility to help them. Mordecai believes that helping people who cannot help themselves is something “you do for your soul” (106), so no amount of sacrifice is too great for him. He considers anyone who is not willing to sacrifice for the greater good to be his opponent.
Grisham’s point of view is clear from the beginning of the novel: The community has a moral obligation to take care of its citizens, regardless of their station in life. At the very least, the collective should do no harm to the individual under the auspice of personal gain.
Justice Is Relative
Michael Brock would like to believe that the law is meant to be followed to the letter, and that doing so results in justice. This belief leads him to reject Drake & Sweeney—they did not follow the law with the River Oaks eviction, and people got hurt. His initial goal is to correct their missteps, thereby achieving justice for the evictees. Michael says of himself and Abraham, his colleague at the legal clinic, “The law was all we had” (183). Through Mordecai’s mentorship, however, Michael soon learns that the law is not, in fact, all they have, and justice varies depending on the beholder.
Mordecai never breaks the law, but he must rely on much more than just written statute to help his clients. As Michael works with him, he observes that Mordecai has connections all over the city; he is a skilled orator and storyteller; people living on the streets trust him, so they give him information he might not get elsewhere, and he is creative about workarounds when his clients cannot give him all the evidence he needs. “His people [are] the hopeless and the homeless, those given little and seeking only the basics of life—the next meal, a dry bed, a job with a dignified wage, a small apartment with affordable rent” (345). These are all things that Michael takes for granted in the beginning of the story, the “basics of life” that he assumes everyone has. Justice is a concept that is not on Michael’s radar because he encounters no situations in his own life that he deems unfair. To Mordecai, however, justice depends on what his clients need or want, which is different for everyone.
Michael’s understanding of justice changes when Lieutenant Gasko arrests him for grand larceny. When Gasko sarcastically says he is getting pressure from “the victims” to follow through with the arrest, Michael “[agrees] with his assessment; it [is] difficult to picture a bunch of wealthy lawyers as victims of a crime” (252). After having helped many true victims with Mordecai, Michael sees how oblivious and self-centered Drake & Sweeney is, and he begins to broaden his view of justice—the purpose of his and Mordecai’s lawsuit is more than righting “individual wrongs”; he understands that “[trials] are sometimes used as pulpits (346) to spotlight systemic discrimination and bias in the law. In this sense, justice is about awareness, which will inspire more people to fight for the greater good.
Every Human Has Value
Although Grisham draws clear lines between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this novel, he ultimately argues that humans are humans—they all make mistakes, and they all have value. While Mordecai represents this theme in spades, Michael’s journey also reveals worthy humans, some of whom are more difficult to appreciate.
Through characterization, Grisham emphasizes that corporations like Drake & Sweeney, River Oaks, or TAG do not have the same inherent value as people— they are clearly not human. Individuals within those corporations, however, are human and do have innate worth, which Grisham points to with a selection of characters at Drake & Sweeney. Hector Palma never leaves Drake & Sweeney, but he is an honest man who works hard to support his family, which is why he feels he cannot openly reject the firm. Despite being pressured by the firm, Barry Nuzzo still comes to talk to Michael and warn him of what is coming. Arthur Jacobs cements this theory with his “soul cleansing” at the end of the novel: After leading the fight against Michael and Mordecai, he is inspired with a new conscience and will to act on it.
Michael’s character arc illustrates that all people are significant, even if they have made what others would deem poor choices or undesirable circumstances. In the beginning, Michael admits that “people from [his] side of town would say [the Burton children] shouldn’t have been born” as a response to the question of how “four innocent children” could “die in the streets, practically in the shadow of the Capitol” (92). This comment implies that Lontae Burton was promiscuous and therefore exacerbated her already existing problems by having more children. The tone indicates that Michael and his friends would resent her and the children because they were a burden to the city (defined as those made the “right” choices). At the end of the book, Michael vacations in the beach house with Ruby, who is still fighting her drug addiction. He recognizes that Ruby has an illness, that she needs help to deal with it, and that none of that makes her any less deserving of a high quality of life than him.
Through these examples, Grisham adds a footnote to the concepts of “good guys” and “bad guys,” as they pertain to individuals: A person can make good choices, bad choices, or neutral choices; they can inflict pain on others or endure horrible situations beyond their control; they can be financially successful or struggling to keep a roof over their head; but none of that makes them more or less valuable than anyone else.
Related Titles
By John Grisham
