47 pages • 1 hour read
A Civil Action
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Symbols & Motifs
Jan Schlichtmann’s Dreams
Schlichtmann is the most obsessively driven figure in the Woburn case. This may contribute to the dreams he suffers throughout. His dreams are nearly always of some disaster that is coming for him, or from which he cannot escape. Late in the book, when he starts to shout that he has always been self-destructive, it makes his dreams look even more significant. If dreaming is the mind’s attempt to deal with conscious experience in a subconscious way, then Schlichtmann’s dreams are an accurate reflector of what his days are like. There is almost nothing like peace in his life, even when he sleeps. Dreams are also hard to trust, but Jan’s dreams are so relevant to the events of his life that it is hard for him not to see them as omens.
Horoscopes, Omens, and Uncertainty
The legal profession requires minds that are as precise as machines. The ability to invent and take apart complex arguments, to synthesize thousands of facts and tens of thousands of abstruse pages of legal briefs, is a skill set that is second only to rationality in its necessity for a lawyer. Nevertheless, the lawyers in A Civil Action have superstitions. Gordon constantly reads horoscopes to his partners, despite their protests. Moreover, he seems genuinely troubled by the horoscopes when they seem to bear unfavorable portents. It is almost a paradox that a mind as rational as Gordon’s can be altered by a discipline that most view as pseudo-science at best. However, as the trial progresses, nearly everything becomes more uncertain than it had seemed. Horoscopes offer a tidy summary of certainty that is lacking in the courtroom. Nor is Gordon the only one with superstitions. Schlichtmann interprets missing a cab, or not having a lucky tie, as the seeds of a disaster in the making. As certain things spiral out of their control, the lawyers will take even the appearance of control anywhere they can get it, despite its irrationality.
Money
Money means different things to different characters in the book, but as a motif, it highlights The Value of Life. Schlichtmann spends obsessively. He is always broke, even when he is billing a lot of hours and settling substantial cases. It is as if he must spend what he has to push himself to earn more. His firm can rarely pay its bills and is always in arrears to creditors. Anne Anderson and the Woburn families consistently say that the trial is about justice for them, not money. However, money is the only part of any potential outcome that is not an abstraction, absent an unequivocal guilty verdict. Facher is a prestigious, high-powered lawyer in an affluent firm; he is frugal and seems to dislike ostentatious displays of wealth, but he works upwards of 90 hours each week as the trial proceeds, generating a staggering amount of legal fees that he will benefit from, even though he doesn’t really care about money. The companies cut corners on behalf of their bottom lines, even at the risk of causing hazardous conditions in the groundwater. Ultimately, everyone is enmeshed in a system that ties human life to financial value.
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