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Friday, 15 August 2008

Another celebration of civil liberties can be found in John D. MacDonald's The Executioners, better known as Cape Fear, the title of its two movie adaptations.

I always thought it was interesting how quickly, in the first (and superior) film, the character of Sam Bowden, played by Gregory Peck, that paragon of virtue, starts playing dirty. Max Cady is evil, sure, but Bowden immediately dumps any notions of innocent until proven guilty as inconvenient and dangerous. (Does this remind you of anything?)

In Chapter One of the book, there's this interesting exchange between Sam and his wife, Carol. He's just told her that he's afraid that Cady is psychotic and may have come to the town of New Essex only because he wants to harm them.

 

"Why don't they put him in jail?"

"What for? My God, it would be nice if you could do that, wouldn't it? An entirely new legal system. Jail people for what they might do. New Essex goes totalitarian. Honey, listen to me. I always use the light touch, I guess, when I talk about the law business. All we moderns shy away from any hint of dedication. But I believe in the law. It's a creaking, shambling, infuriating structure. There are inequities in it. Sometimes I wonder how our system of law manages to survive. But at its base, it's an ethical structure. It is based on the inviolability of the freedom of every citizen. And it works a hell of a lot more often than it doesn't. A lot of very little people have been trying to whittle it into a new shape during these mid-years of our century, but the stubborn old monster refuses to be altered. Behind all the crowded calendars and the overworked judges and the unworkable legislation is a solid framework of equity under the law. And I like it. I live it. I like it the way a man might like an old house. It's drafty and it creaks and it's hell to heat, but the timbers are as honest as the day they were put up. So maybe it is the essence of my philosophy that this Cady thing has to be handled within the law. If the law can't protect us, then I'm dedicated to a myth, and I better wake up."

Of course it could be the whole point of the book that the law is a myth and Sam is naïve. I'm only on Chapter Two, so I don't know.