The Reckoning

“The Bannings were farmers and landowners, but they were workers, not gentrified planters with decadent lives made possible by the sweat of others.”

Pete and his forbearers may have seen themselves as farmers rather than aristocracy, but the relationship with their field hands resembles that of feudal aristocracy. The Lord and Lady are not as egalitarian as they would like to think they are. The idea of decadence is important to the Gothic genre, which often deals with families and cultures in decline, losing vitality, decaying and turning in on themselves, and becoming corrupt.

“He was forty-three, and, at least in [Florry’s] opinion, looked older. His thick dark hair was graying above his ears, and long wrinkles were forming across his forehead. The dashing young soldier who’d gone off to war was aging too fast.”

At the time of the story, Pete should be only just past his prime. His physical appearance is an outward representation of his inner fatigue and his acceptance of death. The murder of Pastor Bell is an act of indirect suicide on Pete’s part. He has given up on life.

“‘I’ve killed a lot of men, Preacher, all brave soldiers on the field. You’re the first coward.’ ‘Pete, no, no!’ Dexter said, raising his hands and falling back into his chair, eyes wide and mouth open. ‘If it’s about Liza, I can explain. No, Pete!’”

The morass of racism and lies in which the characters have been steeped has brought Pete to the point of killing an innocent man. Pete will insist that he was, in legal speak, sane at the time of the killing, but this passage underlines the irrationality of the act. Pastor Bell offered him an explanation, but Pete rejected rationality, and by rejecting reason, he ironically committed an act that might have legally been deemed “insane” in the courtroom.

“[Joel] decided it was probably his mother [who had died]. She had been sent away months earlier and the family was reeling. […] Their father refused to discuss his wife’s treatment, and, well, there were a lot of unknowns. Would her condition improve? Would she come home?”

Mental illness is a common theme in the Gothic genre. It is symbolically associated with women, who represent the emotional and irrational within the genre.

“On the docket for October 21 was the usual laundry list: […] a white man and a black woman who were caught in the act of enthusiastically violating the state’s antimiscegenation laws; and so on.”

At first reading, this passage passes as a simple artifact of Southern culture of the time, but it also foreshadows the revelation in the final chapter, when the reader learns that Liza engaged in an affair with a Black man. Sexism also enters the equation. Whereas a Black man could be hanged either within the law or outside it, a white man could expect a slap on the wrist.

“Pete became the trusty. As such, he served the much improved meals to the other four white prisoners, and to the six or seven black ones on the back side of the jail. Since all prisoners soon knew where the food was originating, Pete was a popular trusty. He organized work details to clean up the jail, and he paid for a plumber to modernize the equipment in both restrooms. For a few bucks, he devised a venting system to clear the smoke-clogged air, and everyone, even the smokers, breathed easier. He and a black prisoner overhauled the furnace and the cells were almost toasty at night.”

This is a contrast between the prison under Pete’s direction and the prisoner of war camp in the Philippines. It emphasizes Pete’s essential decency and increases the tension inherent in the question of why he shot Pastor Bell. Pete seems to be a good man, and the reader must confront the question of what the pastor could possibly have done to provoke him.

“[Jackie Bell’s] husband, a devout servant and follower of Christ, was reading his Bible and preparing his sermon, at church, when he was murdered. Why couldn’t God protect him, of all people? Upon deeper reflection, this often led to the more troubling question, one she never asked aloud: Is there really a God? The mere consideration of this as a passing thought frightened her, but she could not deny its existence.”

This passage reflects the Gothic tension between reason and irrationality. A world ruled by a just God should adhere to rational principles. Instead, the world is chaotic and unjust. The chaos of secrets and racism appear to undermine the order that Jackie Bell expects from religion. This perspective demonstrates the view that God represents reason and thus imposes—or should impose—order. That God fails to do so robs the world of all rationality, the reflection posits.

“If you execute Pete Banning, do you expect to live the rest of your lives with a feeling of accomplishing something, of doing what the State of Mississippi asked you to do? I doubt it. The answer, gentlemen, is that there is no benefit in taking this man’s life.”

The author opposes the death penalty. Grisham has worked for many years with the Innocence Project, which exonerates innocent people who have been wrongly convicted. Many people across the country have been posthumously exonerated by DNA evidence exposed by the Innocence Project. The author makes a point of the cruel and inhumane nature of electrocution as a means of execution through discussing Pete’s fate.

“Between 1818 and 1940, the state hanged eight hundred people, 80 percent of whom were black. Those, of course, were the judicial hangings for rapists and murderers who had been processed through the courts. During that same period of time, approximately six hundred black men were lynched by mobs operating outside the legal system and thoroughly immune from any of its repercussions.”

This is an indictment of racism and mob judgment, but it also foreshadows the revelation in the final scene and primes the reader to understand the danger to Jupe if he had been accused of rape. Even consensual sex might have resulted in his murder.

“People were classified, and often judged, by their denomination. And they were certainly condemned if they didn’t claim one.”

Religion was a key component of Southern culture. It defined sub-communities, even within a single town. This passage also underlines the element of judgment and condemnation that adhered to anyone who violated social expectations. Liza would have faced severe repercussions both for giving birth outside of marriage and for giving birth to a child of mixed race. Fear and shame played a heavy role in her decisions.

“Jupe’s mother had named him Jupiter, which he couldn’t stand, so he shortened it. She was in Chicago, never to return, but Jupe preferred life on the farm and lived with his grandparents. At fifteen, he was a strapping, muscular boy who was fascinated by Liza but terribly shy around her.”

Jupe appears in the story only often enough to foreshadow the revelation at the end. This passage, showing Jupe as younger and overawed by Liza, suggests that Liza was the instigator of their affair.

“In August of 1941, the United States supplied Japan with 80 percent of its oil. When President Roosevelt announced a complete oil embargo, Japan’s economic and military strength was imperiled.”

Grisham has a fascination with World War II, and in this story, the author explains the political and economic factors leading up to US involvement in World War II. The Philippines was a United States territory at the time, and the Japanese were already threatening the Pacific territories. The US was effectively facilitating an enemy assault on US territory.

“Although he performed no acts of combat valor, as required by law, and left his troops behind, MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallant defense of the Philippines.”

The medal of honor is intended to recognize acts of heroism in combat. This passage highlights the tension throughout the book between justice and irrationality.

“The commandant began by telling them that they were not honorable prisoners of war but cowardly captives. They had surrendered, an unpardonable sin. And since they were cowards, they would not be treated like real soldiers. He said that he would like to kill them all but he lived by the code of a true warrior, and true warriors showed mercy.”

Japanese culture at the time was captured by a virulent racism. This passage illustrates the intersection of racism with the culture’s emphasis on death before dishonor. At the same time, the code of the samurai emphasized the strength of self-control and mercy. That mercy has been corrupted by racism, just as racism has corrupted the justice system in the American South.

“They were dying of starvation. On average, they were given fifteen hundred calories a day, about half of what they required. Added to the fact that most had been starving for four months on Bataan, the diet at O’Donnell was lethal, and intentionally so.”

Their Japanese captors exhibited a vicious sadism, but there were practical reasons for restricting food for the prisoners. Food was plentiful in the Philippines, but hunger kept the prisoners weak and easier to control, as well as reducing the overcrowding and expense of the prison camps.

“The guard raised his bayonet, poked Clay in the chest, nodded at the guy in the dirt, and said, ‘Kill him.’ Clay ignored the bayonet and said, ‘No. That’s what you do.’ He took a step back, fully expecting the guard to lunge at him and begin something awful, but the guard only lowered his rifle and stared at Clay, who walked to the tree to retrieve Pete. The crowd slowly dispersed as the dealer came to his senses and started to move. Pete had found a new best friend.”

This passage highlights the fact that, individually, some Japanese soldiers retained their cultural sense of honor. By showing mercy to his vanquished foe, Clay has demonstrated honor in a way that the Japanese soldier recognizes. Where groupthink among the mass of Japanese soldiers prevented them from seeing their captives as people, one man was able to recognize Clay as a human.

“As more prisoners were stuffed into the hold, the men began to suffocate. They were shoulder to shoulder, body to body, with no room to sit, lie, or even move about. They began shouting and cursing and all order broke down. The guards kept stuffing more men below, beating the reluctant ones with rifle butts. The temperature rose to a hundred degrees and men began fainting, but there was no room to fall. Soon, they were dying. The emperor Hirohito refused to ratify the Geneva Convention, and from the beginning of its war in Asia his imperial army treated its captured prisoners as slaves.”

This passage illustrates the parallels between Japanese and American racism. The description of the enslaved white Americans in the hold of the ship is identical in every detail to descriptions of conditions in American ships carrying enslaved Black people.

“A teenage boy bolted from the bush and ran toward them, crying and screaming. Camacho grabbed him and spoke to him in a dialect. As the boy wailed he shook his fists angrily at the guerrillas. Camacho said, ‘He blames us, says we brought the Japanese here.’ Camacho kept talking to the boy, who was inconsolable. ‘He says the Japanese came here a few hours ago and accused the people of helping the Americans. They demanded to know where the Americans were hiding, and since we didn’t know and couldn’t tell them, they did this. Both his mother and his father were murdered. They took his sister and some of the young women away.’”

This passage emphasizes the tension between rationality and unreason. The atrocities were committed by the Japanese, but the boy blames the guerrilla soldiers who have been fighting to drive the Japanese out. For the boy, blame is not placed on the Japanese but on anyone who provokes them by resistance.

“Dunlap offered a sappy smile as if he’d really enjoyed round one, and said, ‘Come on, John, they own twelve hundred acres free and clear and a thousand of it is rich farmland. Their home is one of the finest in the county. They have half a dozen outbuildings, fine structures all, plus the farm equipment, and livestock, and how many Negroes?’ ‘Please, Burch, they don’t own those people.’ ‘For all practical purposes they do…’”

This is the paradox of racism 80 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Legally, the tenant farmers who live rent free on the Banning family are free, but their poverty leaves them at the mercy of the de facto feudal lord who owns the land. Dunlap is both right and wrong. Reason, represented by the law, says the tenant farmers are free, yet the irrational force of racism keeps them dependent. Ironically, the Bannings, who “own” their tenants “for all practical purposes,” treat them better than the new owners of the property, who intend to make a profit off the labor and rent paid by the field hands.

“She entered her home and stood in the kitchen, stopped cold by an aroma that was so thick and familiar it overwhelmed her: […] Liza was staggered by the dense fragrances and leaned on a counter. In the darkness, she could hear the voices of her children as they giggled over breakfast and got themselves shooed away from the stove by Nineva. She could see Pete sitting there at the kitchen table with his coffee and cigarettes reading the Tupelo daily […] She breathed as slowly as possible, sucking in the sweet smells of her former life.”

This is the first scene in which the reader experiences Liza’s point of view (filtered through the omniscient narrator). The Gothic genre often explores the intrusion of the paranormal (irrational) into the natural and familiar (rational) world. However, this is the first time any of the characters has encountered even a metaphorical ghost. Liza has been consumed by the irrational, not because she initially committed a sin but because the irrationality of racism led her into a fatal lie.

“She was as responsible for his death as he was for hers. Above them, they left behind two fine children who didn’t deserve to be punished for the sins of their parents.”

A single lie stemming from the irrationality of both social and personal racism brought about the downfall of an old family of the de facto aristocracy of their time and place. The Gothic genre illustrates the distortion and corruption of virtue as seen here. Joel and Stella have untangled the lies and exposed the secrets, only to find that they have lost the heritage that was destroyed by those lies and secrets.

“‘Hearing the truth is like grabbing smoke in our family,’ Joel said.”

Joel has been seeking the reason (rationality) in his father’s actions, only to find that there was none. Pete’s actions were an overreaction to a lie told to cover up a “sin” that he should have understood and forgiven. Even when Joel thinks he has found the truth, that truth has no substance.

“Her first idea was to do what white women have always done when they get caught—scream rape. That puts the blame somewhere else and makes it easier to take care of the pregnancy. She was at her wit’s end when she decided to confide in Dexter Bell, a man she could trust. He never touched her in a bad way. He was always the kind, compassionate pastor who provided comfort. Dexter convinced her not to go through with the rape story, and in doing so saved Jupe’s life. They would’ve strung the boy up in a heartbeat.”

This passage illustrates the theme of corruption in the Gothic genre. Racism as a theme is particular to the Southern Gothic, as it highlights the threads of irrationality and corruption of its characters.