“But today our self-righteousness, our fear, and our anger have caused even the Christian to hurl stones at the people who fall down, even when we know we should forgive or show compassion.” (Stevenson) This short quote from Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, perfectly summarizes the message and theme of this fantastic novel. The main point of the novel is that even if we have certainty of someone’s guilt, we do not know the full story behind the alleged crime or the person convicted. We can not possibly imagine what drove them to commit such acts or say with certainty in most cases if they committed the crime at all. In the face of this uncertainty or ignorance to such an individual, it is better to show them mercy rather than cruelty. Bryan Stevenson’s …show more content…
Many of the people Bryan interacts with have committed heinous and terrible crimes. To get the audience to sympathize and root for Bryan to help these people, he has to humanize and relate them to the audience. Bryan does this masterfully by providing the audience with their backgrounds in incredible detail, pointing to how most of the crimes they committed were non-violent and if violent, accidental. He also provides a history of the topic surrounding the individual and shows brief examples of cases or statistics. When talking about these cases and people he represented he frames them as the victims and argues that the system and environment played a larger role in the crimes committed. He further humanized them by detailing his encounters with them and explaining how prison had changed them yet still kept their spirits high. Bryan also shows how anyone can get put in prison or death row, even himself. By sharing a story of how he was harassed by police he showcases that in many of these cases, people did not mean to be in those situations and did not know how to act …show more content…
While initially I disliked the alternating method of portraying the story, I soon realized that there really would be no better way to convey the information. As I continued to read I found myself welcoming the breaks between the emotional rollercoaster that was the McMillian case. The cases told in these chapters are still just as engaging as the McMillian case because of how Bryan portrays them. Though when reaching the end of the story where Bryan discusses some of the people and what happened to them, I realized that I had forgotten many of these cases. To help prevent this I think the book may have benefitted from Bryan referencing some of these cases in the following chapters when