Analysis of The Works Of John Grisham

John Grisham is an American writer. He writes legal thrillers. Before becoming a writer, Grisham made a career as a lawyer and as a politician. His books are popular all over the world. Grisham’s characters are live and charismatic. The author creates twisted and interesting plot and investigates the behavior of different people in different life situations.

Grisham created a unique combination in the contemporary literature. He combined his professional skills of lawyer and politician with his outstanding literary gift. This enables him to write interesting and lively stories which illuminated the problems of the contemporary society. Grisham knows how to make narration interesting but he does not center on pretty and nice things. He is not afraid to show human characters in outstanding and even extreme life situations. He is not also afraid to write about problems and complicated situations. His characters are often faced in front of hard choices and they often make mistakes but that is the thing which makes them interesting to the readers. As he wrote in his interview: “I never planned to write books, it was not something I ever thought about. I thought I’d be a lawyer for the rest of my life. It’s important to have goals and to work hard for them, but life has a way of presenting opportunities that you don’t really notice at first. Success a lot of times depends on whether you make a change and try something that you hadn’t planned, something new” (Grisham, Interview). Grisham started his writing career because he had a thing to share with the audience and that is one of the main reasons his works became interesting for many people. At the present moment Grisham has published about 20 books of legal fiction and 5 books of non-legal fiction. Readers appreciate his style and interesting plot makes his book interesting for different categories of readers. Many of his books became the basis for film adoptions.

The Rainmaker, Grisham’s last novel tells a story of Ruby Baylor, a graduator of State Law School. Soon after graduation Ruby realizes that he has little career opportunities. Finally Ruby finds work as a as a mob lawyer and as an ambulance chaser. The author creates a realistic picture of life of many people who graduate Law Schools. During recent time television has created an appealing picture of a successful lawyer who wins complicated cases and gets good salary. In contrast to this popular image Grisham describes real state of events.

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The story not only shows the problems of contemporary employment. Ruby is not afraid to challenge a big insurance company which did not cover a bone transplant for the boy with leukemia. Despite Ruby does not have a prestigious job, he proves to be a good person and starts his fight for justice.

Grisham tells a very touching story of fight of young lawyer against the system. Ruby has just passed the bar exam but his belief in justice helps him to challenge such serious organization as insurance company. The situation is tragic because the Black’s son dies of leukemia before the trial starts. This does not stop Ruby and he makes his best to prove that the actions of insurance company were not legal. Luckily Ruby finds a lot of people who are sympathetic to him and want to stop injustice. Ruby wins the case but he meet further difficulties because the insurance company declares itself bankrupt in order not to pay the money. Ruby and the Blacks do not receive any money because the company is bankrupted but they feel good because they became able to find justice and to make people from the company to become responsible for their unjust actions. Finally personal hardships make Ruby disillusioned in life and he stops his attempts to become a lawyer. He and his beloved woman Kelly move to another place where Ruby dreams to become a teacher. Grisham breaks idealistic pictures of successful lawyers who get moral and financial satisfaction from their work. He shows that even successful cases maybe heartbreaking and devastating.

In his novels John Grisham openly criticiczes social vices. He shows the problems of the contemporary society and turns public attention to them. For example, in Time to Kill he gives his negative opinion about insurance companies: “Their clients were insurance companies who generally preferred not to go to trial and would pay by the hour for legal maneuvering designed solely to keep the cases away from juries. It would be cheaper and fairer to pay a reasonable settlement and avoid both litigation and the parasitic defense firms like Sullivan & O’Hare, but the insurance companies and their adjusters were too stupid and cheap” (Grisham, 1989, 175). This theme is illuminated in his novel The Rainmaker in great detail. His novel gives the readers idea about injustice which takes place in the society every day. People often do not notice problems only because they got used to them and the authors give the readers important message. He notes that injustice can be fought if people unite their effort. Grisham knows what he writes about because some facts he describes in his story are autobiographic. As he told in one of his interviews about his first book : “I was doing a lot of courtroom work, I was a very young lawyer. But I was handling a lot of court appointed criminal cases, in trial a lot. And I knew the criminal system, and I knew a lot about it. And so, I came up with a story about a murder trial, and some of it was based on personal experience, most of it was not. And I kept telling myself, I would like to be the lawyer who defended a father who murdered the two guys who raped his daughter” (Interview). Grisham’s narrations make people reflect on important themes and they can not leave anybody indifferent.

Graham book Ford Country consists of seven short stories. This book shows the author from different perspective. Short stories gives the readers glimpses of different aspects of life. They see seven different stories which investigate people and their reactions in different life situations. For example, in fish files when the person has to choose between the professional ethics and the temptation. In this story a lawyer in the small town gets an unusual proposition which can bring him good income but asks him to break certain ethical norms. The plot of the story is simple but it gives much food for though. The readers can make their own choices and decision when reader this story, same like other six stories from the collection.

Grisham’s books provoke people to think about important issues. They make people remember that there are important things in our life and that there are situations we can change.