Racial Prejudice
A major theme of A Time to Kill is racial prejudice. The painful legacy of the antebellum South and the Jim Crow era, and all of the residual structural and institutional obstacles that remain in the "New South" at the time of the novel's setting, constitute the central thematic material of the novel. The reason Cobb and Willard target Tonya in the first place is because she is a Black girl, and they feel that they can attack her, even kill her, with impunity, and that the community will do nothing to bring her justice. In fact, Grisham demonstrates the clear difference in boundaries for Cobb when it comes to white women and Black women (and children). He writes, "They had been at the lake most of the day, where Cobb had a friend with a boat and some extra girls who were supposed to be easy but turned out to be untouchable. Cobb had been generous with his drugs and beer, but the girls did not reciprocate. Frustrated, they left the lake and were driving to no place in particular when they happened across the girl" (4). These "untouchable" girls, implied to be white women by the circumstances of their casually associating with Cobb and Willard, are shown to have agency enough in the eyes of Cobb and Willard to deny sexual contact with them. Tonya, conversely, is not given that choice.
Racial prejudice also plays a huge part in the way Jake Brigance approaches the defense of Carl Lee. The reason Carl Lee trusts Jake is that Jake earned an acquittal for Carl Lee's brother, Lester Hailey. Lester stabbed another Black man at a honky-tonk. Grisham writes that "Jake enjoyed the stabbings because acquittals were possible; just get an all-white jury full of rednecks who could care less if all niggers stabbed each other" (183). Jake explains to Carl Lee that his case is different because he shot two white men, and an all-white jury will surely feel threatened by a Black man who kills white men. So the double standard is clear.
But it's not only the white juries that maintain this unjust atmosphere. It's also the white politicians and authority figures, like the judges. As Judge Bullard presides over a preliminary hearing, his internal monologue is revealed to be extremely racist and prejudicial. He considers the possibility of handing Cobb and Willard over to the Black attendees of the hearing, and thinks, "That would be fun to watch, and justice would be served. He could just see the fat nigger women stomping up and down while their men carved on the boys with switchblades and machetes. Then, when they were finished, they would collect themselves and all march quietly from the courtroom" (64).
It would be impossible to talk about racism in A Time to Kill without addressing the frequent use of racial slurs in the novel by seemingly every white character, not just the characters that Grisham poses as virulent racists. The use of racial slurs in this novel, set in the mid-1980s, feels gratuitous and unreflective. In other words, the use of slurs seems to evade any further discussion and is taken for granted as part of life in the South; however, this portrayal fails to address the fact that at this point in time, slurs had already been undergoing a process of criticism. The only scene that suggests that white people don't have the right to utter slurs against Black people occurs at the end, during final jury deliberations, and even that scene resorts to a gratuitous use of slurs (465).
Perspective
A major question that is asked throughout the book is "What would you do?" The question comes in many variations, but always refers to the situation of a young daughter being raped by grown men. "What would you do if someone raped Hanna?” (112), "What would you do to the rapist?" (127), "If it was your little girl, and if it was two niggers, and you could get your hands on them, what would you do?” (44). The question is asked to jurors, witnesses, and acquaintances to assess the appropriate response to Carl Lee's actions. The purpose of the inquiry is to suggest that Carl Lee's desire to kill these men was a natural one that defies race and class. The question asks its answerers to put themselves in Carl Lee's position for a moment and consider things from his perspective.
Perspective emerges as a key theme of A Time to Kill and is emphasized by the narrative style of the book. Grisham uses close-third-person narration and free indirect discourse in order to shuttle between the perspectives of his characters. While he pays Jake's perspective the most attention, the structure allows for Grisham's world to be peopled by a broad cast of characters, each of whose internal monologue is available to the reader.
A key scene that demonstrates the importance of perspective in A Time to Kill occurs in the Ford County Courthouse, while Carl Lee cases the building and plans his attack on Cobb and Willard. Grisham writes, "He sat in the judge’s chair and surveyed his domain. He sat in the jury box and rocked in one of the comfortable chairs. He sat in the witness chair and blew into the microphone. It was finally dark at seven when Carl Lee raised a window in the restroom next to the janitor’s closet, and slid quietly through the bushes and into the darkness" (49). Here, Carl Lee is literally attempting to see through the eyes of other people and internalize their perspectives in order to map out his attack on Cobb and Willard and imagine how the crime will be seen by others.
Corruption/Ambition
In Grisham's legal world, corruption is simply an unspoken necessity of operating; whether someone works for the prosecution or the defense, Grisham's characters believe that the only way to stand a chance is to engage in the same unethical practices as their opponents. This leads to a morally bankrupt judicial system. Tied up in this process, and complicating it even further, are the political ambitions of the lawyers and politicians that participate in the system. Winning, for them, is not only about justice, but about furthering their careers. And often, in Grisham's novel, media exposure seems far more important to lawyers than actually taking care of the needs of their clients.
While Brigance and Buckley frequently attack each other for playing to the cameras, they both prove, through close-third narration, to be doing exactly that. While this media-driven ambition is seen, by both, as grounds to attack the other publically, it is privately an obvious boon. In other words, they both recognize that their behavior is shameful, but in the privacy of their own minds, neither seems to care in the least. Grisham writes, "Jake thought he looked great on TV, and he was excited to be there" (78). As for Buckley, "He needed to be seen, and heard. He needed publicity. What Rufus needed more than anything else was a big, nasty, controversial, well-publicized conviction in a murder trial" (94-95).
Ambition and corruption do not, Grisham demonstrates, end with lawyers. They continue up the ladder of the legal profession. Both judges, Bullard and Noose, are portrayed as corrupt, cowardly figures. Grisham writes, "Regardless of the case, the facts, the proof, regardless of anything, Bullard would bind the defendant over to the grand jury. If there was insufficient proof, let the grand jury turn them loose, not Bullard. He had to be reelected, the grand jury did not" (40). Grisham describes Noose as, "Repentant, reformed, and very humbled by his rapid descent from power, Judge Noose applied himself to the study of the law, and after a shaky start, grew to the job. It paid sixty thousand a year, so he could afford to be honest" (117). Grisham demonstrates how both judges prioritize the rewards they get from their positions over the responsibilities that their positions entail.
Class
The town of Clanton is de facto segregated by race, and then by class. The structure of the town depends on the notion that certain establishments cater to a specific group of people. For example, when describing Jake Brigance's favorite diner, Grisham writes, "This was no white-collar cafe. The white collars gathered across the square at the Tea Shoppe later in the morning and discussed national politics, tennis, golf, and the stock market. At the Coffee Shop they talked about local politics, football, and bass fishing" (21). Grisham's distinction between topics of conversation among white-collar and blue-collar workers, particularly the point that at "The Tea Shoppe" they discuss national politics and at the Coffee Shop they discuss local politics, emphasizes the difference in the way that political structures impact the daily lives of people depending on their socio-economic status.
Class becomes a major issue in the Hailey case, particularly when it comes to billing and Carl Lee's decision about who will represent him at trial. When initially discussing a rate, Carl Lee asks Jake what he would charge someone with a lot of money for a capital murder defense. Jake tells him he'd charge $50,000, and Carl Lee, shocked at the price tag, asks if Jake has ever received that much for a case. Jake says, "No, but I haven’t seen too many people on trial for murder with that kind of money" (77). This comment, though brief, underscores the huge impact that a person's economic status has on their likely interaction with the judicial system. It is far less likely that a wealthy person, or even an upper-middle-class person, will have to stand trial for murder or assault.
News Media
The news media play a significant role in how the trial is represented to the people of Mississippi and the rest of the country. The media also threaten to affect the actual legal proceedings of the Hailey case. Clanton is a small, rural town. After news breaks of Carl Lee's actions, the town is flooded with out-of-town reporters, and by Grisham's description, it seems that half the town becomes members of the news media. Tension grows between the people of Clanton and reporters, because, Grisham writes, "Too many of the press hounds had betrayed their hosts and printed unkind, unflattering, and unfair words about the county and its people. It was amazing how they could arrive in packs from all over and within twenty-four hours become experts on a place they had never heard of and a people they had never met" (395). Brigance takes a similarly suspicious, even combative tone with a New York Times reporter shortly after accepting Carl Lee's case. The novel simultaneously resists and supports the idea that many whites in the deep South cling to an antebellum ideal that excludes people of other backgrounds and champions white supremacy. Jake accuses the New York Times reporter of passing judgment on the people of Clanton, but he, too, engages in the same level of judgment, for example, during jury selection.
Religion
Grisham emphasizes the role of the church in rural Southern communities. He alludes to the diminishing role of the church for younger parishioners, and while he typically focuses on the corruption of the judicial system and those who participate in its processes, he also addresses corruption in the church. Grisham poses corruption in the church as an even greater transgression than corruption among legal practitioners. When Reverend Agee withholds the funds that he raised in the name of the Hailey family, he's revealed to be a crook on the level of Judge Ballard or Judge Noose—even more of a crook, perhaps, because he takes advantage of his parishioners' faith. As Agee himself reminds outsiders like the NAACP counsel, Mississippi parishioners are poor, and Black Mississippians are even poorer than their white counterparts. By keeping the fundraising money for himself, Agee is directly stealing from the poor people who look to him for their salvation and pay him because he's convinced them that it is the right thing to do in the eyes of God.
The American South
A rather all-encompassing theme of Grisham's novel, A Time to Kill, is that of the American South. The theme of the South in general serves as somewhat of an umbrella theme, under which the themes of racism, class, gender relations, religion, and the media all fit. However, there are plenty of specific mentions of the South, and the differences between the North and the South in A Time to Kill that are worth further consideration on their own.
History, particularly the history of the antebellum South, plays a significant role in the way that Jake and the people of Clanton see their town. Jake's house is one of two homes in Ford County "on the National Register of Historic Places" (19); by having Jake live in a fancy Victorian home in Clanton, Grisham makes him implicit in the glorification of the pre-war South that Brigance is supposedly trying to fight against in his defense of Carl Lee Hailey. Despite his implicitness, Grisham demonstrates how Jake still struggles with the representation of prominent Confederate figures in the structure of his surroundings. Grisham writes, "Jake had often wondered why every small Southern town had an Adams, a Jefferson, and a Washington, but no Lincoln or Grant" (20). Grisham also draws attention to the casual glorification of Confederate leaders in places that are supposed to be the most nonpartisan realms of the legal system, like the portrait of Robert E. Lee that hangs over Judge Noose's bench.
There are plenty of small nods to the culture of the South, both literary and social. For example, there hangs a large portrait of William Faulkner above Jake's desk. This clear allusion to Faulkner, a major figure in Southern literature, suggests that perhaps, as an author who focuses on issues of the American South, Faulkner looms large in Grisham's creative imagination. Grisham also tends to make generalizations about Southern towns so as to suggest an overarching mythos to them. For example, he writes that "in every small Southern town there’s a kid who was born looking for the quick buck. He was the kid who at the age of five set up the first lemonade stand on his street and charged twenty-five cents a cup for four ounces of artificially flavored water" (392).
