Unfair Trial, or Just Jury?

From a reader’s point of view, we think that Jefferson is innocent. The reason is that the book leans us towards his side. We mostly get Jefferson's side of the story and we know that the all-white jury is likely stacked against him. This makes us empathize with Jefferson due to the unfairness of it all. However, we shouldn’t just so quickly write off the verdict as unfair. We should also look at the evidence from the jury’s point of view.

The evidence of the incident at the store is pretty clear cut since no one tries to refute it. You have two people, Brother and Bear who start causing trouble. They are both trying to buy alcohol, except neither of them have enough money. Bear, who is clearly drunk, starts to act against the warnings that the store owner, Mr. Grope, has given him. Of course, a confrontation, and then a shootout begins and by the end of it, only Jefferson is alive at the store. Then, Jefferson “snatched a bottle off the shelf, wrung off the cap, and turned up the bottle, all in one continuous motion” and took money from the cash register. These actions sort of make him seem shady. Also, there were two witness who saw Jefferson. They saw him with “the money stuffed inside his jacket pocket, the half bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand…” This gives the prosecution and idea for what happened inside.

If I was the jury, I probably would think Jefferson robbed the store. You have three dead men in the store and another man drinking whiskey and with money in his pocket. You also have two men who claimed they saw the same man drinking with money in their pocket from the register inside. For me, if the defense didn’t deny this evidence, what happened inside the store would be pretty clear cut to me. I would think that someone just robbed a store and was drinking in celebration. I wouldn’t think that Jefferson’s story about how he acted dumb and was in the wrong place at the wrong time was true. I would think that he committed murder of the first degree. This shows us that when we are approaching A Lesson Before Dying, we should do it with an open mind, so that we get both perspectives rather than just one. 

Split Screen Movies

I think that using the split screen effect on the film of As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner was a really great idea. It really shows the confusing narrative of the book and shows how the overall story was told by multiple narrators.

As I Lay Dying is a really confusing book. The overarching plot isn't really straightforward. You have to infer a lot of things by reading from the perspective of multiple characters. This makes it really difficult to make a movie on the book. Since there are so many narrators, you can't really make a single view film and hope to capture all of the narration from each character. Instead, I think that James Franco did a really nice job with how he developed the film. Rather than a typical single view movie, he created a split screen movie. This allows us to get different perspectives and reactions to the events that happen in the book. For example, it allows us to get different views towards Addie on her deathbed. The split screen view allows us to see though different character's eyes as events play out, just like how we can see through the eyes of the characters in the book.

My only issue with the split screen view is that sometimes it can be a little hard to follow. Since I read the book, I can use my previous knowledge and apply that to watching the movie. I can follow the different scenes as they play out. However, to an ordinary person who hasn't read As I Lay Dying, the split screen view will be really confusing. This is because there are different scenes and timelines happening from both screens. One screen will feature a character doing something while another screen will have a different character doing something else at a different time. This makes things really confusing since we are used to have a single overall view during most movies.

Overall, I still thought that the split screen view of the movie was really nice. Even though it does make things a little confusing, I still think that it captures the style that As I Lay Dying was written in.