John Grisham's A Time to Kill

John Grisham's A Time to Kill is a powerful courtroom drama that examines the difference between social justice and moral justice in a small town in Mississippi. Given the legacy of segregation and racism in the south, it describes both the emotional and complex legal issues of fairness and equality in the eyes of the law. The story is about a young white lawyer, who successfully defends a black man, clearly guilty of killing the two white men who raped his ten year old daughter. Both the novel and film version are riveting dramas, and their major differences lie in the context of the two mediums.

The basic difference between a novel and a screenplay is that the former can indulge in the luxury of full descriptive passages and the latter must adhere to a very specific structure. Novels give us the opportunity to meet the characters and create a relationship with them. The details of who they are can be developed. We learn about their past. We see them in the context of where they live. The events in a novel move in linear time and with a novel, we have all the time in the world.

A screenplay is structured around the theatrical format of three acts. Act one is the set up with exposition and conflict stated. Act two is the development of the conflict, the arc of the story. Act three is the resolution and moral or message. All this happens in a limited amount of time. The first major contrast between the novel A Time to Kill and its film adaptation is the c

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a loving father. This isn't mentioned in the movie and its omission puts his character at a different level. He comes off more confident. His identification with Carl Lee's anger comes from moral outrage as opposed to personal association. The novel, which was Grisham's first book, goes into more physical description of the town and the secondary characters that provide us with a strong impression of this world. Grisham takes us on a very detailed journey throughout the story and sometimes what he is describing is very graphic. For example: Tonya's rape is actually the entire opening chapter. It goes on for many pages and we find out about her attackers and their background. It's chilling and sets the whole tone of the piece. The movie uses lightening and other cinematic devices to convey the same information. But where the novel sets out to tell the story in progression of linear events, the movie gives us the feeling we're "off to the races". The movie takes us through the story using flashback to build pace and create suspense. Another fundamental difference between the novel and the movie is the point of view. The novel approaches the story from a political angle and the movie from the position that good will

Category: Film - J