Compassion In The Book 'Just Mercy' By Bryan Stevenson

Compassion can be defined as "sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others." It is an essential piece to a more united world. A book that stresses this idea is just mercy. In the book just mercy, lawyer Bryan Stevenson emphasizes the importance of compassion towards others by using strong examples of injustice and personal perspectives, ultimately moving the readers to show compassion to those around them.

Just mercy is a book of human experiences, and one of those experiences is injustice. Everyone has experienced injustice in their life in one way or another. However, the experiences that most people have had with injustice were something small. But that is not the case for Walter McMillan in just mercy.

This is so impactful because the reader has seen throughout the book all that has happened to Walter because of this lie and lack of compassion for him. For it to come out that the police were pressuring Myers finally shows the injustice done to Walter but Myers has compassion for Walter, ultimately leading Myers to end up telling the truth. Stevenson's example in this passage shows readers the impact of compassion on humans around them. Injustice is not only seen through Walter in just mercy, and the same goes for our society. That is why Stevenson shows the injustice forced upon children in the criminal justice system. Stevenson has a few examples, but the most impactful is the story of Joe Sullivan. Joe is a child who committed a crime, but because of that, the police assumed he committed a different crime of which he is innocent. There is little evidence that Joe committed the other crime, but the police

Personal experiences are one of the best ways he pushes his message forward, and the reason for that is how relatable it is. People can connect with what he's saying, so his point has a much more substantial impact on the reader. One prime example of this is Stevenson's personal experience with law enforcement. Stevenson gets accused and detained by police officers for an unjust reason. Then when he tells his roommate about the experience, he remarks, "they never even apologized." What is happening here is that Stevenson uses a relatively unimportant detail in the whole scheme of what just happened to show the profound impact it had on him. Simply by the officers not apologizing, he felt that, as a person, he was not receiving compassion which is exceptionally valid because of all the wrong that the officers have done. They could have at least apologized to Stevenson, but they did not. This makes the reader understand Stevenson's emotions at that moment and how it would have been a much better interaction if the officers had compassion for Stevenson. Another example of Stevenson's personal experiences with compassion is when he could have shown more compassion to someone his age. Stevenson's mom was the one that led him to realize that he was in the wrong for his