Compelling Stories about Trials

Last night, I realized just how similar The Sweet Hereafter is to the Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Both stories involve incidents that require court examinations, and small town attitudes come to the forefront as characters attempt to draw conclusions about past events. Coincidentally, I saw Bridge of Spies last weekend, a movie revolving around a lawyer from Lake Placid who defends a Soviet Spy during the Cold War. Mitchell Stephens of Banks' novel files a negligence lawsuit regarding bus accident case as an outlet for his personal anger towards his relationship with his daughter, while both James Donovan (Bridge of Spies) and Atticus Finch (To Kill A Mockingbird)s' core values are justice. However, in all three cases, the only way to reach resolution is through compromise and deception.

In Harper Lee's novel, Atticus Finch and the Macomb town investigators simply declare that Bob Ewell, the avenging father of a rape accuser, fell on his own knife, when in fact, the town recluse, Boo Radley, killed him in defense of Atticus' children. In Bridge of Spies, the Soviet Spy is only returned to his home after being denied fair trial by the Supreme Court and used as an object of trade to get an American spy and a captured university student back for the United States. Although the school bus driver, Dolores Driscoll, in The Sweet Hereafter knows that she is wrongly accused of driving over the speed limit, readers can be happy to know that the testifier, Nichole, speaks out in a way that her abusive father never would, and prevents her father from gaining any reward from the lawsuit.

The Sweet Hereafter has the most bittersweet ending of all three examples mentioned here, since innocent Dolores is ostracized from the community for the sake of quelling community drama. I love the ending of Banks' novel because of the way it emphasizes just how easily those people who we know for years can turn against us and how ingrained it is for humans to sacrifice one when a whole community is pent up with anger and blame. Empathy is no match for numbers in reality. Murder for murder, one captive for another, and an innocent victim for a false testimony; too often, two wrongs result in relative peace. This is not the way it should be, but such tension sure keeps audiences on the edge of their seats!