Novel: "The Chamber" by John Grisham

I recently finished this big novel by John Grisham. It came out in 1994, and there was a movie based on it, but somehow I STILL didn't know how the story turned out.

The basic plot involves a young lawyer trying to save his grandfather from the gas chamber for some KKK murders down in Mississippi.

There is SOME mystery in this story, but that's not really the point of the book. The first point of the book is to show us what it is like, to make us FEEL what it is like, to live on death row. The second point of the book is to argue against the death penalty. Grisham tries hard to humanize the people on death row so we will sympathize with them. The basic argument of the book is that killing is wrong: the criminals were wrong to kill and the state is equally wrong to kill them.

[Note: If you click on this link for The Chamber and then buy anything from Amazon then Anything Smart will earn a commission. Thanks for your support!]

The argument that murders and executions are morally equivalent seems very weak to me and is probably false. Most of us do not really believe that a criminal murdering an innocent victim and a government executing a murderer after due process of law are really doing the “same” kind of thing.

But there is another argument in this book, an implied argument based on empathy. This argument might actually be a little stronger in this case. Justice should be blind, right? So, if I would not agree to have my own grandfather executed, how can I justify having someone else's grandfather - or father - or son, executed?

One of the great things novels do is give us a chance to experience things we never will experience in any other way. I think this novel does a good job of giving us a sense of what it is like to live on “The Row,” year after year after year.

As Grisham describes how people live in this strange environment we end up sharing their food - turnip greens and pinto beans and corn bread, we listen intently with them to every sound outside their 6 by 9 foot cells, every foot step, every creak and clang, trying to interpret what is happening in the “outside” world. We count our steps every time we get out for a visitor or a spell in the yard, counting our steps to measure a little extra freedom by how far we can walk without hitting a wall.

[Note: Here is Grisham's first novel. A searing indictment of racism from 1989.]

Most of all we get a sense of the flow of time on the row, slow and dragged out and boring when the execution date is far away, faster and faster and filled with a sickening tension and dread as the date looms closer.

I am against the death penalty but I would not use the arguments made in this book. There are stronger arguments than Grisham deploys here. Nevertheless, what makes this book worth reading is just that it lets us see, and hear, and feel, things that some few other human beings do actually see and hear and feel, and that we, God willing, never will. Unless we read this book.

This novel tells a tragic and horrifying story. I don't feel quite right saying I “enjoyed” it.... It is a dark and painful story. I am not sure that I would want to read this novel twice. But I am happy I read it once. I needed to read it once....

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[Note: And here is a more recent novel by Grisham: "Camino Island" from 2017. Let me know what you think of it!]

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Copyright © 2020 by Joseph Wayne Gadway