deartraveller

Dear Sara,

I had so much fun this week we spent together! Virginia is such a great place to go on vacation: the ocean, the heat, the soft sand… I will certainly recommend it to my parents for a second honeymoon! You won’t believe how many pictures we took: eight hundred! At least fifty of those are of that night when Gabriel fell asleep earlier and we spent the entire time putting toothpaste in his hair (I can’t stop laughing just remembering his face in the morning). I miss you both already! By the way, you will be glad to know that I thought Gabriel was a really nice guy, he’s is approved by me!

Well, after such an exhausting week of endless fun with you, the plans for this night were a bit calmer: some popcorn, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and one of my favorite films “A Time to kill” from 1996 based on John Grisham’s best-selling novel. I don’t know if you ever saw it, but if you never did you won’t believe what you’re missing! What a cinema masterpiece!

Summing up the plot, the movie portrays the story of Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), a Mississippi blue-collar worker, who has his world turned up-side-down when two men brutally assaulted his ten-year-old daughter. In the deep South, at the time, black men were strongly discriminated against, so, fearing the men will not receive justice, Carl Lee takes the law into his own hands and murderers them. He then turns to an eager and idealistic young laywer, Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey, I know you love his work!) for his defense and an energetic law student (Ellen Roark, played by Sandra Bullock) volunteers to help him in the case.

I just fell in love with this movie! It was one of the things that made up my mind about going to law school so I can definitely say that it changed my life. The passion with which Jake defends Carl Lee in court it’s just overwhelming. They are so different from each other and yet Jake looks past trough the stereotypes and helps him anyway, despite the constant threats he receives. Almost in the end of the film, when he thought all hope of saving Carl Lee was lost, he made a speech that I will never forget (I know it’s long but it’s worth reading):

“I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. (…) This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they've killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she's white.”

That is what I want to do for my life! I want to help those who need me, I want to stand up in front of a jury and fight for what I believe in. Give a speech just as heartwarming as this, so that people would listen closely to every word of it. This movie has taught me that despite any difference human beings may have, we are all equal in the eyes of justice, and that justice leads us to a better world, and a better world is a cause worth fighting for! It showed me that trough commitment, determination and hard work, a fair trial can be heard, regardless of race, even in a country drowned in racial prejudice.

The truth is that this night may have been one of the most important of my journey through the world. I mean, deciding what I want to do was one of the reasons why I came in the first place. I may have discovered my future… Can you imagine me as a lawyer? Well, I can.

I hope you will find what you’re looking for too. I’ll meet you again soon!

Love,

Érica.