An Analysis Of The Homeless People In America Reflected In John Grisham’s Novel The Street Lawyer
APPENDICES
i.
Biography of John Grisham
John Ray Grisham, Jr. or popular with John Grisham is an American lawyer,
politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He was born in
Jonesboro, Arkansas (on February 8, 1955) to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John
Grisham. His father worked as a construction worker and a cotton farmer, while his
mother was a housewife. When Grisham was child, his family started travelling
around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County,
Mississippi at 1967. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. Despite the
fact that Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged her son
to read and prepare for college. Grisham changed colleges three times before
completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977,
receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the
University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest
shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a Juris Doctor degree.
Grisham married Renee Jones on May 8, 1981, and they have two children,
they are Shea and Ty. Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won
election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to
1990. Grisham represented the seventh district, which included DeSoto County.
The early Grisham’s writing career was in 1984, when he was hanging
around the court. He overheard a twelve-year-old girl telling the jury what had
happened to her. Her story interested Grisham and he began watching the trial. He
saw how the members of the jury cried as she told them about having been raped and
beaten. Her story was inspired Grisham to start a novel exploring what would have
happened if the girl’s father had murdered her assailants. Grisham wrote his first
Universitas Sumatera Utara
book, A Time to Kill that took three years to complete it. But no one who wants
published his book, and it was rejected by 28 publishers until Wynwood Press, an
unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000 copy printing. It was published
in June 1988.
The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another
novel, The Firm, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect
law firm that was not what it appeared. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times
bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written one novel
a year that is The Firm, and many of Grisham’s books have become international
bestsellers. There are currently over 275 million John Grisham books in print
worldwide, which have been translated into 40 languages. Nine of his novels have
been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The
Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping
Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man
(October 2006) marked his first foray into non-fiction, and Ford County (November
2009) was his first short story collection. In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V.
Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the
Tulsa Library Trust.
When he’s not writing, Grisham dedicates his time to charitable causes,
including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million dollars
for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now he also serves as the
local Little League commissioner to keep up his passion about baseball. He built the
six ball fields on his property which have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little
League teams.
Universitas Sumatera Utara
ii.
Grisham’s Works
Year
Novels
1989
A Time to
Kill
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Short
Story
Collections
-
Nonfiction
Children’s
books
Screenpla
ys
-
-
-
The Firm
The Pelican
Brief
The Client
The
Chamber
The
Rainmaker
The
Runaway
Jury
The Partner
The Street
Lawyer
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The
Testament
The
Brethren
A Painted
House and
Skipping
Christmas
The
Summon
The King of
Torts and
Bleachers
The Last
Juror
The Broker
-
-
-
The
Gingerbrea
d Man
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Mickey
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Playing for
Pizza
The Appeal
-
The
Innocent
Man:
Murder and
Injustice in
a Small
Town
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Universitas Sumatera Utara
2009
-
2010
The
Confession
2011
2012
2013
iii.
The
Litigators
Calico Joe
and
The
Racketeer
Sycamore
Row
Ford
County
-
-
-
-
-
Theodore
Boone: Kid
Lawyer
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Theodore
Boone: The
Abduction
Theodore
Boone: The
Accused
Theodore
Boone: The
Activist
-
-
-
Summary of The Street Lawyer novel
The main character in this novel is Michael Brock, a lawyer working for
Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. Michael was in
a hurry. He was struggling up the ladder of success at Drake & Sweeney. The money
was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star
who did not waste his time to throw a few coins into the cups of beggar, no time to
relax, and no time for a conscience.
One day a homeless man calling himself “Mister” enters the Washington
D.C. law firm Drake & Sweeney and holds Michael and other lawyers as the
hostages. Michael and the lawyers manage to get out of the situation but the
homeless man gets killed. Although he is eventually shot by a police sniper and the
hostages freed, one of the hostages, an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock wants
to know who is the man that holding them. Michael finds out later that the homeless
man was a mentally ill veteran who’d been in and out of shelters for many years.
Michael finds his way to the 14th Street Legal Clinic, where he meets Mordecai
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Green, an advocate for the homeless, who asks him to help one night at a homeless
shelter.
Later, Michael know that this “Mister” had been evicted from a building
where he live, where he was paying rent and Drake & Sweeney was responsible for
the eviction. Michael feels compelled to investigate further and found a dirty secret
and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney, the law firm where he work. And the
result of Michael’s investigation say that his own employer was complicit in an
illegal eviction, which eventually resulted in the death of a young homeless family.
Michael started helping Mordecai Green, a lawyer for the homeless, and soon
Michael left Drake & Sweeny and became a lawyer for the homeless, a street lawyer.
But just before he officially left his firm, he take the eviction file that he wanted to
see. Immediately he copied the data and surely to return the data to its place. But the
firm found out about the missing file and it is quickly suspected of its theft.
From this file, Michael began to find out more about the eviction and realized
it was illegal and his ex-firm, Drake & Sweeney, was responsible for wrongful
deaths of some homeless people, who had died after being evicted. Shocked by what
he has found, Brock leaves his firm to take a poorly paid position with the 14th Street
Legal Clinic, which works to protect the rights of the homeless. This leads to his wife
divorcing him. He admits one of his clients, Ruby, to a therapy class for drugaddicted women, and in the process meets Megan.
Drake & Sweeney comes to Michael after he alleging with theft and
malpractice when he out from Drake & Sweeney law firm while Michael filed a suit
against his ex-firm, with the help of Mordecai Green, and they were representing the
evictees. The partners of Drake & Sweeney know that they were wrong. Terrified of
the certain bad publicity, the matter is settled by mediation. They met with Mordecai
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Green to settle on an agreement without a jury. They were offering Mordecai and
Michael $770,000 and two-year suspension for Michael for stealing the file.
Mordecai made an offer of $5 million and a one-year suspension for Michael. If
Drake & Sweeney agreed everything would be over without the public hearing about
it but if they disagreed, Mordecai would bring in a jury and was confident of winning
and humiliating Drake & Sweeney. But they do not reach an agreement and finally
this case was bring in a jury and reach the deal that is Drake & Sweeney give $5
million as compensation coast and the clinic receives a large payout to be shared
with the victims of the eviction. For the first the 14th Street Legal Clinic will take
two million up front. The balance of three million can be spread over the next ten
years by installments three hundred thousand a year, and nine month suspension for
Michael.
Arthur Jacobs as the CEO of Drake & Sweeney was deeply troubled by the
events. This event opens his heart and he offers to make pro bono staff available to
assist the work of the Clinic in fighting for the rights of homeless people. This novel
ends with Brock taking a short vacation with Megan and Ruby, and them reflecting
on their lives.
Universitas Sumatera Utara
i.
Biography of John Grisham
John Ray Grisham, Jr. or popular with John Grisham is an American lawyer,
politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He was born in
Jonesboro, Arkansas (on February 8, 1955) to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John
Grisham. His father worked as a construction worker and a cotton farmer, while his
mother was a housewife. When Grisham was child, his family started travelling
around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County,
Mississippi at 1967. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. Despite the
fact that Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged her son
to read and prepare for college. Grisham changed colleges three times before
completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977,
receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the
University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest
shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a Juris Doctor degree.
Grisham married Renee Jones on May 8, 1981, and they have two children,
they are Shea and Ty. Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won
election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to
1990. Grisham represented the seventh district, which included DeSoto County.
The early Grisham’s writing career was in 1984, when he was hanging
around the court. He overheard a twelve-year-old girl telling the jury what had
happened to her. Her story interested Grisham and he began watching the trial. He
saw how the members of the jury cried as she told them about having been raped and
beaten. Her story was inspired Grisham to start a novel exploring what would have
happened if the girl’s father had murdered her assailants. Grisham wrote his first
Universitas Sumatera Utara
book, A Time to Kill that took three years to complete it. But no one who wants
published his book, and it was rejected by 28 publishers until Wynwood Press, an
unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000 copy printing. It was published
in June 1988.
The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another
novel, The Firm, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect
law firm that was not what it appeared. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times
bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written one novel
a year that is The Firm, and many of Grisham’s books have become international
bestsellers. There are currently over 275 million John Grisham books in print
worldwide, which have been translated into 40 languages. Nine of his novels have
been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The
Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping
Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man
(October 2006) marked his first foray into non-fiction, and Ford County (November
2009) was his first short story collection. In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V.
Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the
Tulsa Library Trust.
When he’s not writing, Grisham dedicates his time to charitable causes,
including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million dollars
for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now he also serves as the
local Little League commissioner to keep up his passion about baseball. He built the
six ball fields on his property which have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little
League teams.
Universitas Sumatera Utara
ii.
Grisham’s Works
Year
Novels
1989
A Time to
Kill
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
Short
Story
Collections
-
Nonfiction
Children’s
books
Screenpla
ys
-
-
-
The Firm
The Pelican
Brief
The Client
The
Chamber
The
Rainmaker
The
Runaway
Jury
The Partner
The Street
Lawyer
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The
Testament
The
Brethren
A Painted
House and
Skipping
Christmas
The
Summon
The King of
Torts and
Bleachers
The Last
Juror
The Broker
-
-
-
The
Gingerbrea
d Man
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Mickey
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Playing for
Pizza
The Appeal
-
The
Innocent
Man:
Murder and
Injustice in
a Small
Town
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Universitas Sumatera Utara
2009
-
2010
The
Confession
2011
2012
2013
iii.
The
Litigators
Calico Joe
and
The
Racketeer
Sycamore
Row
Ford
County
-
-
-
-
-
Theodore
Boone: Kid
Lawyer
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Theodore
Boone: The
Abduction
Theodore
Boone: The
Accused
Theodore
Boone: The
Activist
-
-
-
Summary of The Street Lawyer novel
The main character in this novel is Michael Brock, a lawyer working for
Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. Michael was in
a hurry. He was struggling up the ladder of success at Drake & Sweeney. The money
was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star
who did not waste his time to throw a few coins into the cups of beggar, no time to
relax, and no time for a conscience.
One day a homeless man calling himself “Mister” enters the Washington
D.C. law firm Drake & Sweeney and holds Michael and other lawyers as the
hostages. Michael and the lawyers manage to get out of the situation but the
homeless man gets killed. Although he is eventually shot by a police sniper and the
hostages freed, one of the hostages, an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock wants
to know who is the man that holding them. Michael finds out later that the homeless
man was a mentally ill veteran who’d been in and out of shelters for many years.
Michael finds his way to the 14th Street Legal Clinic, where he meets Mordecai
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Green, an advocate for the homeless, who asks him to help one night at a homeless
shelter.
Later, Michael know that this “Mister” had been evicted from a building
where he live, where he was paying rent and Drake & Sweeney was responsible for
the eviction. Michael feels compelled to investigate further and found a dirty secret
and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney, the law firm where he work. And the
result of Michael’s investigation say that his own employer was complicit in an
illegal eviction, which eventually resulted in the death of a young homeless family.
Michael started helping Mordecai Green, a lawyer for the homeless, and soon
Michael left Drake & Sweeny and became a lawyer for the homeless, a street lawyer.
But just before he officially left his firm, he take the eviction file that he wanted to
see. Immediately he copied the data and surely to return the data to its place. But the
firm found out about the missing file and it is quickly suspected of its theft.
From this file, Michael began to find out more about the eviction and realized
it was illegal and his ex-firm, Drake & Sweeney, was responsible for wrongful
deaths of some homeless people, who had died after being evicted. Shocked by what
he has found, Brock leaves his firm to take a poorly paid position with the 14th Street
Legal Clinic, which works to protect the rights of the homeless. This leads to his wife
divorcing him. He admits one of his clients, Ruby, to a therapy class for drugaddicted women, and in the process meets Megan.
Drake & Sweeney comes to Michael after he alleging with theft and
malpractice when he out from Drake & Sweeney law firm while Michael filed a suit
against his ex-firm, with the help of Mordecai Green, and they were representing the
evictees. The partners of Drake & Sweeney know that they were wrong. Terrified of
the certain bad publicity, the matter is settled by mediation. They met with Mordecai
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Green to settle on an agreement without a jury. They were offering Mordecai and
Michael $770,000 and two-year suspension for Michael for stealing the file.
Mordecai made an offer of $5 million and a one-year suspension for Michael. If
Drake & Sweeney agreed everything would be over without the public hearing about
it but if they disagreed, Mordecai would bring in a jury and was confident of winning
and humiliating Drake & Sweeney. But they do not reach an agreement and finally
this case was bring in a jury and reach the deal that is Drake & Sweeney give $5
million as compensation coast and the clinic receives a large payout to be shared
with the victims of the eviction. For the first the 14th Street Legal Clinic will take
two million up front. The balance of three million can be spread over the next ten
years by installments three hundred thousand a year, and nine month suspension for
Michael.
Arthur Jacobs as the CEO of Drake & Sweeney was deeply troubled by the
events. This event opens his heart and he offers to make pro bono staff available to
assist the work of the Clinic in fighting for the rights of homeless people. This novel
ends with Brock taking a short vacation with Megan and Ruby, and them reflecting
on their lives.
Universitas Sumatera Utara