It is the case of a black person taking the law against a white one. This is a story of race conflict, drawn through violent circumstances that will emphasize the proportions of that eternal war. The courtroom dramas, that display the ability of lawyers to argument, to bring details into light, convince jury of a point-of-view, justify facts and present evidence are a favorite topic in American film industry. The film version would have been void of density without the trial suspense.

The conflict of morality, the eternal battle of right and wrong that will not always agree with what is forbidden or allowed (is it illegal to kill a criminal, but is it right to do it if they deserve it?). And especially the moral conflict of the people that have the power to judge this kind of actions and need to stay objective even through very powerful beliefs and traditions.

Among all this conflict there is yet another intolerance issue: the sympathizing groups. The lawyer defending the black character gets threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. The community is divided between those that agree with one side or the other, and both sides hate each other to the point of reaching violent terms. Fanaticism makes them take measures against the other side, defying the laws and the order of the town. Corruption is inevitable and the groups both count with followers that will try to manipulate the laws in their own favor. This is a caricature of how real society works, bending the rules in favor of personal interests.

This story shows racism as a distortion of values in the minds that fall into that weakness. The two rapists...

They attacked the little girl, specifically, because she was black. Racism creates in the mind of people the image that the other person is inferior, not worthy of respect. In the mind of the racist characters (criminals, jury, viewers of the county) the crime seemed less serious if the victim was black than it would have seemed if she had been white. This unconscious perception of things reflects how powerful the suggestion is for somebody dominated by this kind of beliefs.
The fact that the father is released at the end of the story is perhaps the author's attempt to reestablish the faith in justice and shed a bit of light on the viewer. The book would have had a completely different impact -one much more dramatic, more shocking and more outraging on the readers if they had convicted the father for revenging his daughter on his own. The final message we receive from this book, is that, in spite of everything, justice won from every point-of-view, as the criminals where punished, and the victims were avenged. Perhaps this approach might be a little less realistic and somewhat more commercial. The author kept people in suspense and gave them what they wanted to see in the end. However the moral message lingers at the end, about the inevitable intolerance our society still has to face and how hard people must work to fight and defeat it.

Bibliography

Time to Kill." Amazon.com. 2 Aug. 2007 http://www.amazon.com/Time-Kill-Matthew-McConaughey/dp/0790729660

Grisham, John. A Time to Kill. New York: Dell edition, 2004.