The trial in literature. A study of the legal aspects in three emblematic novels: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, by Dickens; Billy Budd, by Melville; and The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

Abstract

The plots of Billy Budd and The Bonfire of the Vanities are organized entirely around a lawsuit. In The Pickwick Papers the trial is only a part, though an important one, of a series of related adventures in which the main characters of the novel participate. In the three novels there is a trial in which the accused is found guilty, although he is actually innocent. In The Posthumous Papers of the Club Pickwick, the author’s main purpose is to present the operation of the legal system, in which the modus operandi of unscrupulous lawyers, who rely only on cheating and deceiving methods, is atthe beginning of and determines the outcome of the lawsuit. In Billy Budd, an innocent is sentenced to death in order to preserve a supposed higher interest: the common good. In The Bonfire of the Vanities, political factors, personal interests, resentments and other worldly elements determine the outcome of the trial. In the three cases, the watchmaking mechanism that a lawsuit appears to be is completely overcome by factors outside it.