The Reckoning

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-10

Part 1, Chapters 11-20

Part 2, Chapters 21-28

Part 2, Chapters 29-35

Part 3, Chapters 36-43

Part 3, Chapters 44-50

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

The Banning Plantation

The Banning farm represents the Old South, steeped in racism and the corruption that comes with it. The family takes pride in the belief that they are farmers, not plantation owners, but the distinction is more in name than practice. The field hands on their land aren’t enslaved, but most of the hands are Black people, and their relationship to the Banning family is like the slavery of the forebearers, so much so that Jackie Bell's lawyer describes the Banning family as effectively owning their field hands. They are dependent on the landowner to supply needs such as homes and education.

For the Banning family, the land represents stability, security, and history. Joel and Stella initially look at the farm as a source of security and income to support them as they forge their own lives, but as the prospect of losing the land looms closer, they realize how much of their own history and identity is also wrapped up in the land and the responsibilities that come with it. Errol McLeish highlights that heritage for Joel when he sees how McLeish treats the field hands as profit objects rather than a protectorate of the family.

The family burial plot is located on the land (on Florry's half, which remains in the family), and Joel reflects that at least that much of their history will still be accessible. At the same time, he reflects that the family gravesite represents buried secrets, and he is ambivalent in his feelings about that. He doesn't want to be like the ancestors who carried dark secrets to their graves.

When Joel learns the final bitter secret that destroyed his parents, he becomes resigned to losing the land, knowing that if the family remains tied to the symbol of that history, they have no chance of breaking free from the accompanying corruption. Joel and Stella grieve the loss of their heritage, but at the same time, they recognize that losing the farm gives them a clean start.

The Law

The law represents the Gothic tension between the reason of order and the irrationality of racism, trauma, and murder. Whereas a straightforward detective story focuses on the capture of those who act outside the law, the legal thriller or drama concentrates on the nuts and bolts of how those laws are applied and negotiated to achieve a fair (rational) outcome.

The challenge for the community is to negotiate the conflicting needs of justice. Pete must be punished for his crime. To do otherwise would be to assert that the community does not frown on murder. At the same time, the community, knowing Pete's character, believes Pete must have had some justification for his actions. If he had only given them his reason, they might have been able to justify a sentence of life in prison.

The death penalty presents another conflict between order and irrationality. As Pete's lawyer points out, the death penalty does nothing but punish Pete's family, without making the community any safer. Symbolically, the justice system stoops to irrationality by putting the jury, the justice system, and the government on the same level as the murderer who takes a human life. Through the death scene, Grisham shows the inhumanity (irrationality) inherent in taking a human life. None of the people who witness Pete's death can forget it.

Civil damages are another potential deterrent to crime, and Jackie Bell's civil suit against the Banning family illustrates the conflict of fairness and justice. The Bell family is entitled to compensation for their loss, yet Joel and Stella are being forced to pay for their father's crime by losing the land that represents their heritage. The legal process is the community’s way of imposing a rational order capable of holding the community together.

Guns

The guns in the story are typically used to represent vengeance. Grisham's interest in storytelling is in the law, and his characters rarely carry or resort to firearms. Whereas some authors use guns as tools to impose order or justice, Grisham treats guns as instruments of chaos.

Guns are obviously associated with Pete's wartime experience—an explosion of chaos and madness. After his escape from the Japanese, guns became very specifically an instrument for vengeance in Pete's mind. When he shoots the Japanese seaman on the sinking ship, Clay says, “You shot that son of a bitch!” and Pete answers, “I did […] and with his own gun” (249). As Clay says to the fisherman who rescues them, "We have scores to settle" (252). Afterward, when they are making their way into the mountains, Clay and Pete encounter a wounded Japanese man, kill him with his own gun, take the weapon, and gut him with his own bayonet. Clay and Pete are taking on themselves the brutality of their captors and turning it back on them. Hatred and the urge to revenge continue to drive Pete and Clay through the end of the war.

After his experience in the Philippines, the gun is the obvious tool for Pete to use to try to restore order to his open-ended universe. In Pete's case, guns have been linked inextricably to revenge. He may believe he is extracting justice, but the gun turns out to do the opposite, wreaking chaos and killing a man who was innocent.