Theme on Dolores Driscoll - Essay Example

appears here] appears here] appears here] appears here] The Sweet Hereafter-Theme on Dolores Driscoll Most literature that deals with law, in fact, tends to focus on crimes rather than civil wrongs. One exception is a current work by Russell Banks entitled The Sweet Hereafter. The story involves a school bus crash that kills fourteen children and the legal aftermath of the tragedy. On a winter morning in a small town in upper New York State, a school bus veers off the road, crashes through a guardrail, and plunges through the ice in a water-filled sandpit. In short order, the town attracts a plethora of plaintiffs' tort lawyers seeking to sign up clients. The goal of the lawyers, once they have enlisted clients, is to target the affluent or deep-pocket defendants. We hear the story through the comprehensive introspections of each of the fundamental characters; the bus driver, a number of parents, one of the wheelchair-bound children, and particularly the big-city lawyer hungering, he says, for righteousness. However the events, apart from the crash itself, don't in actual fact matter so much as the characters' elucidations of the events as well as the consequence of those events on those characters and on Sam Dent. The bus driver, a vigorous, fine woman, Dolores Driscoll, takes us along her way and informs us regarding the children until the instant the big, yellow International leaves her control. Banks takes the account complete circle when Dolores Driscoll arrives at a tentative and heartrending understanding with her Sam Dent neighbors. Dolores Driscoll is accountable for the loss of 14 innocent children. As it was a usual day for Dolores apart from the fact that she was driving the children to school and then she ensues to see something in the road. Dolores is not unerringly sure of what it is but she articulates "It was like a ghost of a dog I saw, a reddish-brown blur, much smaller than a deer." When she perceives this animal like figure Dolores turns sharply to a side of the road. In doing so she drives the bus into a trench and 14 children die right away when they strike the icy water. Thus the story of the incident is told by four characters, who present their versions of the crucial facts in narrative style. All of them struggle, not only with the relevant facts, but with their own personal backgrounds and values. The first narrator or witness is the bus driver, Dolores Driscoll, an established member of the community. She explains what happened in a manner that exonerates herself. Her version is acceptable to the lawyers because their focus is on defendants who have greater resources. The lawyers who are pursuing clients also engage in lawsuits against each other arising out of claims of improper solicitation. The town is enmeshed in the legal web. The next narrator is Billy Ansel, the father of twins killed in the accident. Billy was a witness to the accident since, according to his custom, he was following the bus at the time of the accident. A veteran of Vietnam, his life has been filled with random violence and inexplicable death, like that of the accident. He resents the lawyers and refuses to join the lawsuit. He does not believe that litigation or money will quell his pain. He rues the fact that "there'll be all kinds of appeals, and I'll be tangled up in this mess for the next five years. This thing is never going to go away". He is, however, a crucial witness for the lawyers and claimants. The third narrator is the key lawyer, Mitchell Stephens, who represents the popular image of an aggressive personal injury lawyer. He feels fully alive only when pursuing a major cause of action. He believes that misfortunes or accidents do not exist, only injustices that demand a remedy in court. He believes in his role as protector of the wronged, but is ready to manipulate the facts and the people to accomplish his personal goals. Although a caricature of the modern trial lawyer, he represents both the best and worst qualities of those who function in our adversarial system. The final narrator is Nichole Burnell, a victim of the accident who survived but is confined to a wheelchair. She is torn with conflict between her personal need for justice and the public desire for justice by means of the lawsuit. She has and will continue to suffer real injury as a result of the accident. Her greater need, however, is to exact revenge against her father (based on her personal agenda) by thwarting the lawsuit which he is intent on joining. In the end, she lies about the cause of the accident, placing the full blame on the driver for speeding, and undermines the basis for recovery against deep-pocket defendants. The lawyers and the law that they represent are thwarted. The townspeople return to their normal lives of civility but not before executing symbolic revenge against Dolores, the driver, who is now forced to bear the full weight of blame. As Dolores put in the picture her account of the events in the book, a dog or as a minimum a vague impression of some sort passes rapidly across the pathway of the bus as it carries on down hill in a gathering snow. One of the parents articulates that Dolores is responsible for the crash on a patch of ice. In her statement in the book, Dolores utters that the bus was "on its own" whereas Nichole, the crippled teenager, states that Dolores was pacing at the time of the accident. Banks on the other hand leave us with the feeling that Nichole is lying as a plan to stop the lawsuits, Lawyer Mitchell Stephens gave a reason that if Dolores was at mistake the "deep pockets" of the state, the town, as well as the school would be hard to reach on carelessness grounds and to penalize her father with whom she has had a sexual relationship. Without a doubt, at one point in the book, Nichole articulates that she memorizes nothing regarding the accident. In conversing with Stephens, Dolores admits that she really does not any idea how speedily she was going even though she notified the police "Fifty, fifty-five at the most." To Billy Ansel, who lost two kids in the crash, and who was next behind the bus in his pickup, it was all an accident. However as he utters in the book, lots of townspeople and lawyers could not leave it at that. Moreover after that, there were those people who would like to accept as true that the accident was not in actual fact an accident, that it was one way or another caused, and that, consequently, someone was to hold responsible. Was it Dolores's mistake Lots of people believe Dolores accountable for the accident. Or else was it the mistake of the State of New York for not changing the railing out there on the Marlowe road "Was it the faults of the town highway department for having dug a sandpit and let it fill with water What about the seat belts that had tied so many of the children into their seats while the rear half of the bus filled with icy water Was it the governor's fault, then, for having generated legislation that required seat belts Who caused this accident anyhow Who can we blame" (Helle Porsdam, 1999) Very rapidly, lots of parents come to see this disaster as no matter which but a simple, thus far unexplainable, accident. Those devastated victims, with the assist of a crowd of assaulting lawyers, restate the story. Consequently, in commonplace, so far philosophically reminiscent ideas as well as language, Banks carries out an investigation of the accident. He examines the connotation of blame and of accident and forces us to think on the subject of why we so badly require allocating accountability when something goes erroneous. Dolores Driscoll, the bus driver, of course observed the complete horrible story in to a certain extent a different light. To her, a sufferer however conceivably as well a villain, the town has to discover its own quiet way out to the tragedy. The town have to survive and get going and the assignment of responsibility has very little to do with that continued existence. She had been at the middle of a dreadful accident. She, too, had mourned, although at this moment she wanted her town back, and she looked forward to them to accept her as well as her husband. Can a community instantaneously tear up by the loss of its kids discover its way home in order that it can embrace Dolores and accept the intolerable Or else does the community's deliverance is positioned in the chase of justice Can a lawful judgment that pretenses as truth, and the money that goes with it, present the salve Sam Dent so urgently needs conceivably those queries cannot be answered adequately, however Banks presents an attention-grabbing likelihood in the doubtful venue of a destruction derby which turns out to be something of an parable aggravated by pain but redeemed by amnesty. Finally, we can not utter that Sam Dent has bring into being the "sweet hereafter," however we are familiar with that the town has made an respectable run for it, as well as the thought of community hasn't been completely quenched even for these suffering souls. As a result Banks appears to have thriven in his self proclaimed end. Bibliography Helle Porsdam, 1999. Legally Speaking: Contemporary American Culture and the Law Book; University of Massachusetts Press, pp 5-10 Read More