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The analysis of "The Client" by John Grisham
John Grisham starts his enthralling novel - “The Street Lawyer”. Already the first paragraphs of the book hit you hard and you start anticipating for something abrupt, maybe even dreadful to happen. That homeless man is a Vietnam veteran, a man full of grudge for his landlord for becoming a tramp. With no clear motive, he comes to a huge law firm, “Drake & Sweeney”, and takes nine lawyers hostage. Among them is the main hero of the book - Michael Brock. The homeless man wants to revenge, to chastise the firm which has “stolen” a roof over his head, made him sleep on the cold pavement, live in hell. For him it already does not matter that by keeping the lawyers in hostage he puts himself into a peril. Nevertheless, he has nothing to lose: he has no family, no home, no life of full value. Maybe some day in the past he had everything: a job, a roof, food, but somebody had taken his life, had made him a squatter and the street became his only home. He does not crave for anything else but for the rightness, so that he could find the meaning in his mere existence. He desires to be respected, to be a part of the society. He is fed up with being humiliated, he yearns for being treated as equal to the others and even higher, more powerful than they:
“ ‘Look, pal, just exactly what do you want?’
‘Do not call me Pal,’ the man said(…)
‘What would you like us to call you?’(…)
‘Mister,’ he said.” (pg. 5)
“Mister” is not a fierce villain, capturing people because of inclination to kill, to feel satisfaction by seeing blood. No, he does not want to abuse anybody. Simply he sees no other way to be listened to, only by waving a gun at the horrified faces. He wants to open the eyes of all those complacent rich people, who are proud of their wealth ever so much. They are showing their meanness by grudging a tiny part of money from their inexhaustible lake of riches for such people as “Mister”, who live in a total misery. The biggest part of well-paid advocates spend thirty dollars for lunch, eating a grilled chicken Caesar, drinking the best wine at the luxurious restaurants while at the same time, under the same sky and the same sun, in the same city a lot of people are starving in the streets. They feel content with the free soup and crackers which they occasionally get. Moreover, they are afraid of thinking about something better. They have at least something to eat, they can exist… People who have never been hungry, who have never slept under the blanket of freezing snow do not know what it means. They walk along the streets without casting a brief glance at the people who are sitting on the sidewalks and begging for money to buy some food and to find a warmer, dryer place to sleep. The majority of [next page]