by Philip Meyer
Now let me ask you this question: When we walk out of here I ain’t going to be able to say another word, and you’re going to have to make some decisions, and they are going to be made not just about Karen Silkwood, and not just about those people at the plant, but people involved in this industry and the public that is exposed to this industry. That is a frightening obligation.… Can you do it? Do you have the power? Are you afraid? If you are, I don’t blame you, because I’m afraid, too. I’m afraid that I haven’t the power for you to hear me. I’m afraid that somehow I can’t explain my knowledge and my feelings that are in my guts to you. I wish I had the magic to put what I feel in my gut and stomach into the pit of every one of you.75
Initially, it is difficult to contemplate how Spence will move the narrative forward into the final stage of the battle between good and evil; nor is it clear how he will connect the past-tense melodrama about Silkwood with the mythic present-tense story of the trial itself and the heroic quest of the jury to preserve the value of justice itself. Spence solves this creative and aesthetic problem by finally removing the covers from The Beast. Like the shark in the final battle-to-the-death confrontation in Jaws, The Beast emerges visible from beneath the mud springs (just as the identity of Karen Silkwood is revealed, and just as Spence has revealed his own vulnerability and fearfulness). In his final revelation appears Kerr-McGee, the antagonistic force, embodied, venal, devouring, and naked at last, dripping radioactive plutonium from the bodies of young and innocent workers, future victims of death by cancer, trapped in its grasp, victims of its insatiable appetite for profits.
In his transition to completing the second act or movement of the narrative—his portion of the telling of the tale and the completion of the past-tense melodrama—Spence identifies Kerr-McGee as the cause of “the immense tragedy in this case that most of us haven’t thought about verbally.”76 It is not just Silkwood’s tragedy, but a tragedy for the workers still alive. “[T]hese young men may very well die. That is a horrid secret that nobody has told us.”77 The accidents have unleashed plutonium and cancer that will cause even more death if the jury does not listen to Silkwood’s prophetic warnings and stop Kerr-McGee.
In this representative excerpt, Spence intersects two discrete parts of the story (the past-tense melodrama about Silkwood and the present-tense story of the trial itself and the jury’s heroic quest for justice). The Beast arises from beneath the mud springs, just as Karen Silkwood predicted prophetically:
And I can hear them [agents of Kerr-McGee] saying to you and to those boys and girls that “there has never been a cancer caused by plutonium, that we know of.” … I’ve prosecuted murderers—eight years I was a prosecutor—and I prosecuted murderers and thieves, and drunk and crazy people, and I’ve sued careless corporations in my life, and I want to tell you that I have never seen a company who misrepresented to the workers that the workers were cheated out of their lives. These people that were in charge knew of plutonium. They knew what alpha particles did. They hid the facts, and they confused the facts, and they tried to confuse you, and they tried to cover it, and they tried to get you in the mud springs. You know and I know what it was all about. It was about a lousy $3.50 an hour job. And if those people knew they were going to die from cancer twenty or forty years later, would they have gone to work? The misrepresentations stole their lives. It’s sickening. It’s willful, it’s callous.…
… Karen Silkwood, before she died, before this case was thought of, said that “these young men don’t know.” You heard her voice: “These young men, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old don’t understand.”78
J. “The Resolve” by the Jury
Spence leaves it to the jury to do what Karen Silkwood could not do. He resounds her prophetic warning: what will happen in the future if the jury does not stop Kerr-McGee. But he is not quite done: Spence returns to his opening, offering his own dark vision of “the Cimarron Syndrome” before the arrival of “the prophet.” Here, his nightmare foreshadows the future, flash-forwarding twenty years to what will be if the jury does not stop Kerr-McGee here and now:
Now I have a vision. It is not a dream—it’s a nightmare. It came to me in the middle of the night, and I got up and wrote it down, and I want you to hear it.… Twenty years from now—the men are not old, some say they’re just in their prime, they’re looking forward to some good things. The men that worked at that plant are good men with families who love them. They are good men, but they are dying—not all of them but they are dying like men die in a plague. Cancer they say, probably from the plutonium plant. He worked there as a young man. They didn’t know much about it in those days.… Nobody in top management seemed to care. Those were the days when nobody in management in the plutonium plant could be found, even by the AEC, who knew or cared. They worked the men in respirators. The pipes leaked. The paint dropped from the walls. The stuff was everywhere.…
… Some read about plutonium and cancer in the paper for the first time during a trial—the trial called “The Silkwood Case”—but it was too late for them. Karen Silkwood was dead, the company was trying to convince an Oklahoma jury that she contaminated herself. They took two and a half months for trial. The company had an excuse for everything. Blamed it all on the union. Blamed it all on everybody else—on Karen Silkwood, on the workers, on sabotage, on the AEC. It was a sad time in the history of our country.79
Spence then looks into the future and sees the “time of infamy” as “worse than the days of slavery” when “the government held hands with these giants, and played footsie.”80 He describes it as “a sad time, the era between ’70 and ’79—they called it the Cimarron Syndrome.”81 By projecting forward into time, Spence visualizes the alternative resolution to the story if Kerr-McGee is not stopped, and he now assumes Silkwood’s prophetic role himself. Then Spence suggests answers to riddles the jury must solve in its deliberations. The first riddle: who was Karen Silkwood? Answer: she was “a brave, ordinary woman who did care. And she risked her life, and she lost it.”82 Then he suggests an answer to the second part of this riddle, of what she was trying to tell the world: “And she had something to tell the world, and she tried to tell the world. What was it that Karen Silkwood had to tell the world?”83 Answer:
I think she would say, “Brothers and sisters.…” I don’t think she would say ladies and gentlemen. I think she would say, “Brothers and sisters, they were just eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. They didn’t understand. There wasn’t any training. They kept the danger a secret. They covered it with word games and number games.” And she would say: “Friends, it has to stop here today, here in Oklahoma City today.”84
Spence intuitively understands that there is nothing more to say, no place left to go with his story. His work is complete: “I’ve still got half an hour, and I’m not going to use it.”85 Spence uses an oral formulary, a stock anecdote that empowers the jury to write the final ending to the story—preferably a big Hollywood “up” ending—and to impose a coda upon the tale; it is “a simple story, about a wise old man—and a smart-aleck young boy who wanted to show up the wise old man for a fool”:86
The boy’s plan was this: he found a little bird in the forest and captured the little bird. And he had the idea he would go to the wise old man with the bird in his hand and say, “Wise old man, what have I got in my hand?” And the old man would say, “Well you have a bird my son.” And he would say, “Wise old man, is the bird alive, or is it dead?” And the old man knew if he said, “It is dead” the little boy would open his hand and the bird would fly away. Or if he said, “It is alive,” then the boy would take the bird in his hand and crunch it and crunch it, and crunch the life out of it, and then open his hand and say, “See, it is dead.” And so the boy went up to the wise old man and he said, “Wise old man, what do I have in my hand?” And the old man said, “Why it is a bird my son.” He said, “Wise old man, is it alive, or is it dead?” And the wise old man said, “The bird is in your hand
s, my son.”
Thank you very much. It has been my pleasure, my God-given pleasure, to be a part of your lives. I mean that.
Thank you, Your Honor.87
III. Concluding Observations
A. “Every Story Is Over Before It Begins”
As observed initially, beginnings and endings are deeply interconnected; beginnings must be carefully selected and developed in anticipation of the ending at the other end of the trajectory of plot.88 The ending—the point of a story—gives the plot closure and meaning. This is especially so in law stories, like Spence’s Silkwood, where the plot drives forward toward an implicit and unstated final ending. This ending must be all but inevitable to the jury, ever the more so because the final resolution is left for the jury to impose on the case outside the presence of the storyteller—an ultimate thumbs up or thumbs down, declaring which storyteller will emerge successfully from storytelling combat in the courtroom.
For example, in Spence’s heroic melodrama, the true ending that Spence proposes is not the death of the protagonist Silkwood but rather her resurrection and redemption. The heroic jury is compelled to compensate Silkwood’s family, punish Kerr-McGee, save the community, and subjugate the evil corporation by declaring that the heroic protagonist did not die in vain. It is here, outside the courtroom, where the jury finally solves Spence’s three mythic riddles, slays the evil beast of Kerr-McGee, and provides justice with a satisfying narrative outcome and closure to the tale. Teachers of storytelling like John Gardner advise young writers—and this advice is affirmed by narrative theorists including Peter Brooks—that stories, especially stories with the hard and predictable trajectories such as genre-based melodramas, are best constructed backward, knowing exactly what the desired ending is and then developing the story line by working backward from the ending.89 Thus, beginnings typically foreshadow all that will occur afterward, often suggesting how the story will end, although the ending is not explicit and may not be apparent in a jury trial until the moment when the jury provides the ending and imposes a final coda of meaning on the tale.
The beginning is crucial for another reason; it typically provides a narrative “hook” that engages and captures the imagination of the listener or reader, and it shapes and defines the world of all that transpires afterward. This “hook” also compels the audience to ask the storytellers the question “what happens next?” in initiating the trajectory of a plot.
Spence’s complex argument in Silkwood opens slowly. There are many false, yet purposeful, starts before he arrives at the story. But Spence speaks to a captive audience that has already listened to the testimony and the presentation of evidence at trial over many weeks. He has been given four hours for his initial and rebuttal arguments. He can afford to be patient, to take his time before he finally arrives at the beginning. Likewise, he can simply reference evidence and fragments of testimony to evoke the fullness of imagery, characters, and scenes, drawing implicitly on the jury’s recollections of the materials presented during the past eleven weeks of the trial. Thus, he can be economical in his re-presentation of the narrative particulars; he does not have to revisit every detail, although it is crucial to sequence the narrative events into a plot that takes into account all the evidence and defendant’s counterstories. And Spence must, of course, be meticulous, truthful, and comprehensive. He must be—or appear to be—completely ethical and fair-minded to maintain credibility with the jury, or he risks losing everything.
Initially, he reestablishes his interactive or “dialogic” relationship with the jury, building his own credibility and his caring about and respect for the jurors and, also, reemphasizing the singularity and profound importance of this case: “It’s the longest case in Oklahoma history, they tell me. And … this is probably the most important case, as well.… [A]nd it’s the most important case of my career.… And, I have a sense that I have spent a lifetime, fifty years, to be exact, preparing somehow for this moment with you.”90 This is Spence’s hyperbolic version of the standard lawyer’s warm-up, or “proem,” that Spence has incorporated into numerous closing arguments. Yet it seems spontaneous and sincere; rhetorically, Spence’s credibility is crucial. Likewise, he endeavors to engage the jury “dialogically.” Spence then frames his story in terms of his legal theory of the case (the “lion gets away” and strict liability) and characterizes the defendant’s theory and evidentiary counterstory (the analogy of “the mud springs”). The law is transformed alchemically into narrative. Finally, Spence delivers an initial narrative “hook” and develops the “setup” for the melodramatic confrontation that follows. He begins a highly stylized and self-consciously literary pronouncement, signaling the start of the story: “It was a time of infamy, and a time of deceit, corporate dishonesty. A time when men used men like disposable commodities—like so much expendable property.”91
Here, in contrast to the idyllic depictions of the anterior steady state in Jaws and High Noon, the trouble has already arrived onstage; it is already a dark and troubled time. The evil corporation has already taken over Crescent, and the survival of the community is at risk. The story is clearly not just about Silkwood and compensation for her injuries; far larger values are at stake.
Structurally, the beginning defines the outer boundaries of the narrative frame within which the ending must be achieved. The trajectory of the plot later returns specifically to this dark and foreboding place (an anterior steady state) when Spence reveals his nightmare vision for the future if the jury does not intervene on Silkwood’s behalf. The initial foreboding simultaneously suggests an alternative, preferable, and irresistible “up” ending for the melodrama—a transformed steady state where the community has been liberated from the forces of antagonism and Silkwood’s prophetic warning finally heeded; justice (literally the value of justice) will prevail and “law and order” will be restored in the Wild West.
But where is Silkwood in these initial paragraphs? She is not cast onstage initially. Spence first personifies the villain and the forces of antagonism of the dark, powerful, and sinister corporate giant Kerr-McGee; he brings it alive, giving it powers of thought, intentionality, and language: “well, I guarantee that corporation does not speak ‘South,’ it doesn’t speak ‘Okie,’ it doesn’t speak ‘Western,’ it doesn’t speak ‘New York.’ … It speaks one language universally. It speaks the language of money.”92
Finally, in the third portion of Spence’s initial setup, protagonist Karen Silkwood, the prophet, is cast onstage to finally confront the evil villain, The Beast Kerr-McGee:
Who is Karen Silkwood? Who was she? … I say she was a prophet, an ordinary woman who cared, and could understand, doesn’t have to be anything other than an ordinary woman who cared and understood in order to be a prophet.… [A]nd she prophesied it this way.… She says this to you, ladies and gentlemen: ‘Something has to be done.’”93
This completes the beginning or setup. Now the action begins.
Let’s compare Spence’s gradual setup with several more economical and compressed beginnings or openings (two from literature and one from the movies) and observe how these openings all achieve similar objectives in dissimilar ways. In “Beginning,” a chapter in a primer for young writers, the novelist, critic, and teacher David Lodge identifies several illustrations of strong literary openings: the first from Jane Austen’s Emma and the second from Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier:94
[From Emma]
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father, and had, in consequence of her sister’s marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caress, and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as g
overness, who had fallen … little short of a mother in affection.…
… The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened [to] alloy her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.95
[From The Good Soldier]
This is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy—or, rather, with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove’s with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs. Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.96
Lodge describes the beginning of Emma as “classical: lucid, measured, objective, with ironic implication concealed beneath the elegant velvet glove of the style. How subtly the first sentence sets up the heroine for a fall. This is to be the reverse of the Cinderella story, the triumph of an undervalued heroine.… Emma is a Princess who must be humbled before she finds true happiness.”97 The opening clues the reader in to the steady state of lazy luxury that has existed for two decades (akin to the steady state of decay and corruption that exists in Silkwood) and, also, that this steady state is due for a reversal (or why would it be mentioned?). The opening is of a maturation or coming of age plot.98 Typically, in Hollywood parlance, this is either an education plot (if the story ends well, with Emma’s character changing after learning from her experience) or a disillusionment plot (if the story ends badly, with Emma’s fall from grace).99 Lodge identifies the meticulous word choice and allusions that, before the end of the first sentence, prefigure all that will take place thereafter:
