Sympathy In John Grisham's Calico Joe

A character in a book is a representation of a human, a real human, a human with emotions. Whilst reading a book, one should feel how the characters are feeling as though they were a fellow human. An invaluable tool used by author to do this is sympathy. An author uses sympathy to get the reader to feel the emotions of the character, to understand the emotions. In stories filled with tough topics, such as it is in John Grisham’s Calico Joe, it is important to try to get the reader to feel sympathy because otherwise, the reader may feel detached from and uninterested in a story. As such, an author often tries to provoke sympathy for many characters, and by looking at how the author does this, it can help the reader understand the motives behind the story better. In the book Calico Joe, by John Grisham, the author provokes sympathy for Paul’s mother in the reader by talking about how bad the marriage was between her and Warren, how Warren treated her children, and how long she endured his mistreatment. Paul’s mom didn’t have a good marriage, she was, among other things, beaten …show more content…
It is used to help draw the reader in, to make the reader feel like they truly understand the characters in the book. John Grisham does a wonderful job at this in his novel Calico Joe, by adding emotional passages based on what the characters felt, by explaining how characters felt, but not in cold, callous way, but in a way that struck the reader. He especially did this with Paul’s mother, talking about just how bad the marriage was between Warren and Paul’s mother, and how long she endured it -- even while he abused her children. While he bases the story on Paul’s experiences, he also has a seemingly unintentionally focuses on Paul’s mother, because of how important she was to him during his childhood. Sympathy is but one of the tools used by John Grisham, but is certainly a powerful and noticeable