The novel begins with the question: how can justice prevail in a society dominated by a single group of people? The judge was white, the lawyers were white, and every member of the jury was white as well. Jefferson does not receive a trial by his peers. Jefferson's attorney appeals to the prejudices held by society when he says, "What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this (8)." The highly unjust nature of this situation robs Jefferson of his human rights. Not yet guilty of murder, but guilty of being black in a racist society, Jefferson now depends on the jurors' compassion and sense of morality, rather than their understanding of the law. If they choose to acquit him, they do so only out of pity for what his own lawyer calls "a boy and a fool (7)." If they convict him, however, they do so out of the standards of the racist community.
             Grant Wiggins understands that according to the predominant stereotype, a black man is guilty in the eyes of the law and the trial just becomes a performance. Grant, the narrator, is a proud black man who suffers from the effects of racism. Grant is very pessimistic and distances himself from his family and community at the beginning of the novel. Grant implies that he chose not to go to the trial when he says, "either I sat behind my aunt and his godmother or I sat beside them (3)." Grant could not be sitting beside them, as his entrapment of racism keeps him separated from them. He did not go to the trial because he says, "I knew all the time what it would be (3)." Grant indicates that despite the fact that Grant dislikes the harsh, definitive nature of racism, he himself operates in a world of stereotypes, relying upon what he thinks will happen, as opposed to what he actually observes with his own eyes. Grant admits to Vivian that he cannot fa...