The Street Lawyer by John Grisham POV and author bg

ENC1102
17 November 2014
Author Background and POV
The author of The Street Lawyer is John Grisham, who, like the main character of this book, was at one time a lawyer. Born February 8th 1955 in a small Arkansas town, growing up he had many dead-end jobs, until half-way through college he initially decided he would become a tax lawyer, but found it insanely complex and discarded that dream to instead become a trial lawyer. In 1982 his law office started to struggle for lack of well paying work and he took a House seat in the Mississippi State legislature. It was here, while loitering around a courtroom pretending to look busy, he first felt compelled to write. A violent murder case was in the process and inspired his first novel, A Time To Kill. Despite his first novel being somewhat unsuccessful, he went on to write 22 more novels, and is well-known despite keeping a low-profile.
Grisham is an author who writes what he knows, and that’s small town injustice, which is why he implements an autobiographical feel by using first-person point of view in most of his novels and The Street Lawyer is no exception. The action unfolds through the eyes of the protagonist, Michael Brock, a jaded lawyer disillusioned with the American justice system who eventually becomes an advocate for the poor. Because Grisham only gives only Brock’s perspective he is easily identifiable as a round character, his personal narration highlights his quick change from conscientious legal lackey to socially committed attorney in a way that would feel detached from any other point of view, for example, he opens with, “The man with the rubber boots stepped into the elevator behind me, but I didn’t see him at first. I smelled him though—the pungent odor of smoke and cheap wine and life on the street without soap”, establishing that he has a sort of prejudice towards the homeless. Later, he becomes determined to get the homeless who were kicked out of their makeshift homes justice, “If we found Hector Palma, we could grill him under oath. If we tracked down the other evictees, we could force them to tell what happened.”
This viewpoint also aids in building suspense as the reader can only know what Michael knows, “I went right to the front seat . No file. After a moment of panic, I found it behind the driver’s seat, on the floor, intact”, so the reader must uncover clues alongside him, creating a sense of anxiety and a desire to turn the page. This sharp focused point of view serves as a reliable, though changeable, stance from which the reader can learn and grow alongside the main character, which heavily relates to the theme of the novel that money doesn’t guarantee happiness.