In the movie A Time to Kill there are three main areas of prejudice; which include the government, the Cobb family, and Jake Brigance. The government was the main antagonist in the movie as they tried to convict Mr. Haley. The Cobb family was very prejudice in the fact the two sons raped the young African American girl. Jake Brigance thought that he was not prejudice throughout the entire movie. Then in the end everyone found that they had their own prejudices against other people and the jury found this with Jake Brigance’s speech.
Once the occurrences of the felonies had taken place, the government was sent in to make sure that the two white boys received their justice against Mr. Haley. The government was against the Mr. Haley the entire movie and did not care if he lived or not. They would do anything to insure that the two brothers received their justice, even if that meant rushing Mr. Haley on the stand to make him sound sane. The defendant was very biased and did not want Mr. Haley to receive a fair jury so that they could make their case.
However the Cobbs were probably the most prejudice of them all. They were a family born and raised in the southern belief that all colored people were slaves and not considered human beings. The two Cobb sons took this to an extreme and found out how their beliefs were not true anymore. The friends of the Cobb brothers then tried to seek revenge with the KKK. This caused even more prejudice in the movie. As a result the whole city took one side or the other and campaigned for their side.
Up until the very end Jake thought that he was for the African American side, when all along he was just trying to cover up for his own downfalls of not alerting the police before certain events took place. Jake went through a lot of trouble in order to save Mr. Haley. He lost his house and almost lost his marriage to his wife. Even after all of that he still managed to keep together and pull off saving Mr. Haley, but he didn’t realize until the very end that he was prejudice through out the whole trial. In the end he realized this and pulled off the biggest turnaround in the whole trial.
Overall there were a lot of prejudices in the movie played on both sides by everyone. In the end Jake found peace and won the trial, but he sacrificed a lot to do so in the process. The Cobbs realized that what their family did was inexcusable and wrong. The government was upset that they had been beaten by someone who was still in law school. The movie played out everything great and in my opinion was a very good movie.
