The Pelican Brief

“Coal thrived on hatred.”

Fletcher Coal is a shrewd and merciless manipulator. He knows that he has a reputation as a cruel and vicious man, causing people to hate him, but this negative attention only feeds into his ego. He believes that he is working for the greater good of the country, so the more Coal feels the hatred of others, the more he believes that his bad behavior is justified.

“We won’t recognize the Constitution in ten years. This is sick.”

Callahan learns of the death of his hero Rosenberg and realizes the stakes: The deaths of two Supreme Court Justices give a conservative President the opportunity to shape the court. While the deaths of two men are tragic in their own right, the lingering aftermath of the assassinations will resonate in legal decisions for generations in ways not yet possible to discern. Solving their murders will not just bring closure to victims, but can safeguard the future of the American legal system.

“The trial verdict was only a temporary victory for the defendants.”

The oil companies win the first round in their battle against the environmentalists, but they are already prepared for what is to come: an indefinite number of appeals and counter-suits. The two sides are not equal: Though the environmentalists may be right in their claims, they lack the resources of the oil companies. Oil companies will throw money at the problem until they get what they want because they stand to gain billions.

“The voice was clear, articulate, and appeared to be intelligent.”

The nervous voice Grantham hears on the telephone appears intelligent enough to understand the danger of the call. Garcia/Morgan is smart enough to know that people who would murder two Supreme Court Justices would not hesitate to murder him as well. Morgan’s assumptions prove correct, as his death shows.

“The three seldom talked. Her father had been the glue in a fractious family, and his death had scattered them.”

Darby’s family broke apart in the wake of her father’s death. He had been the peacemaker and without him, her family dissolved. She grieves both her father and the way he helped her family to function. Now, Darby is attracted to older men in a subconscious attempt to fill the niche in her life left by her father. Callahan is brilliant, attractive, and deeply in love with Darby, but he is also an older man who represents stability and safety for this bereft young woman.

“Mourning would only get her killed.”

Darby is a practical woman. She is a second in her class at a top law school, but her intelligence is not limited to textbooks and academia. She has an emotional intelligence that helps her escape difficult situations. Though she is still in shock following Callahan’s death, she recognizes that she is in danger. She represses her emotions, forgoing her desire to mourn so that she can remain alive. Her ability to bury her emotions helps Darby survive.

“Someone in the White House of Fools wanted the story on the front page.”

Grantham knows how the press operates. When he sees the story about Khamel on the front page, he can trace its origin back to Coal. The story is not wrong—Khamel is the killer—but the way the story landed on the front page is more interesting to Grantham than its content. Grantham unpicks the complicated tangle of lies that delivers an easy answer to a complicated question of why two Supreme Court Justices were murdered.

“This place was crawling with them.”

Darby’s fear turns to paranoia, as she imagines her environment infested with people who want to capture or kill her. Given what has happened in her life recently, she is right to picture “crawling” (175) vermin. The real difficulty is letting go her fear enough to take action to protect herself. The terrifying sense that the entire world is out to get her could be paralyzing—and Darby only survives as long as she stays a step ahead of her pursuers.

“He had once agreed to kill Fidel, but couldn’t do it.”

Even though Khamel is the world’s best assassin, even he has a sense of morality. He considered the Cuban leader to be too much of a friend to assassinate. Friendship is worth more to Khamel than a paycheck, as he has plenty of money but so few friends.

“I’m at a pay phone, so no funny stuff.”

Each time Darby uses a payphone, she tells the person she is calling not to try any “funny stuff” (180). She repeats the phrase like a mantra, a way to feel in control of the situation and safe. This phrase helps her to relax. However, she is not necessarily right to lower her guard. Grantham’s investigation of Garcia shows that anyone can track down the location of a payphone with relative ease. Darby’s lack of understanding shows both her desperation and her naivety.

“After five days and two near misses, she was throwing in the towel.”

Darby has been on the run for so long that she loses her sense of perspective. She has jumped from hotel to hotel and changed her physical appearance, allowing her to avoid the attention of seasoned professionals. By allowing the FBI to take her in, she believes that must abandon all the effort she has put into staying alive. But this is her burnout talking, not reality. Going to the FBI for protection is not quitting—Darby is simply surviving by other means. The fact that she views this decision as “throwing in the towel” (205) shows the speed with which the absurdity of her situation has warped her worldview.

“His head hit first with a thud, but he probably felt nothing. He rolled over and his forehead was bleeding.”

As Trope and Booker sit on a bench and talk, they see a homeless person fall over and hit his head. The bleeding man could be really hurt, but Booker and Trope remain where they are. As representatives of their respective intelligence agencies, they cannot interfere—only gather information. They continue their conversation while a seemingly unimportant man suffers. This small incident reflects how intelligence agencies have been operating in the aftermath of the assassinations: They’ve watched, but done nothing.

“I reward my friends, and I punish my enemies. That’s how you survive in politics.”

The President has a noticeably clear worldview that has brought him a great deal of success. He has become the most powerful politician in the world by knowing whom to help and whom to ask for help. Ironically, this tit-for-tat tactic will prove to be his undoing. The President’s inability to cut his losses with Mattiece will cost him reelection and taint his presidency.

“He got drunk later, and it saved her life.”

Darby reflects on the death of Callahan and realizes that his drinking saved her: Callahan’s alcoholism infuriated her enough to not get in his car, so the bomb did not kill her. Darby sees the absurdly fine line between life and death, as well as between justice and injustice. If she had not argued with Callahan, then Mattiece and his men might have escaped scot-free, though this does not provide her any comfort as she grieves for the man she loves.

“It’s just a little sleazy, okay.”

As Darby spends time with Grantham, she realizes that everyone uses the sleazy, dirty tricks used by the people pursuing her. There are no good guys and bad guys; instead, everyone is a blurred mess of gray morality, trying to do what is best. This means Darby must make individual, spontaneous judgments on which individuals to trust. Grantham passes her test, as he is willing to at least acknowledge the sleazy nature of his actions.

“Some of our enemies hire our lawyers to lobby our government.”

The years Darby spent training to be a lawyer taught her about the absurdity of the American legal system. Here, for the first time, she is speaks about this with someone who is not also part of the lawyerly class. By discussing what the American legal system is with someone outside of it, she realizes that she no longer wants to be a lawyer.

“We’re going to sit on our asses and lose the biggest story I’ve seen in twenty years.”

The intelligence operatives, the politicians, and the trained killers are all notably lacking in morality, but they are not alone. The editorial team at Grantham’s newspaper is also willing to use human life for professional reward. They tell Grantham to hurry and to potentially endanger the lives of people so that he can be the first to break a story, putting the sanctity of human life in question.

“She’d made him paranoid, and he half expected thugs to be hiding on the sidewalk with automatic weapons.”

The more time Grantham spends with Darby, the more he picks up her paranoia, which spreads like an infection. He now expects to see men with guns on the streets—a fear that seems overblown, but in this case is actually not wrong. His phone is tapped and men have broken into his house. Darby’s fears are not irrational. In fact, they help both to stay alive.

“You clowns in Washington are to blame for this.”

Mattiece blames the “clowns in Washington” (318) for the problems he and the President now face. He does not blame himself for hiring an assassin to murder two Supreme Court Justices. The way in which Mattiece apportions blame shows how far beyond the boundaries of morality he has stepped. He does not view murder as wrong—instead, the real crime is the incompetent fools beside him. Murder means nothing to a remorseless psychopath like Mattiece, but competence is a necessity.

“I’ve been sleeping days and rambling nights.”

Morgan’s widow Beverly, like Darby, has been trying to grieve in impossible circumstances. These two women mourn differently, but their struggles echo each other. The lack of truth and clarity surrounding the deaths of Morgan and Callahan prevent their significant others from a healing outpouring of emotion. Denying them the opportunity to grieve adds an extra, cruel dimension to their suffering.

“My name is Curtis Morgan, and since you’re watching this, I’m probably dead.”

Curtis Morgan felt the pull of a greater morality despite the threat of death. After ensuring that a life insurance policy would provide for his family, Morgan gave the world with enough evidence about Mattiece to redeem his immoral legal work. Morgan’s death becomes a tragic redemption, a way for him to bring justice to a world that he feels that he has wronged. His awareness of his own fate and his own flawed morality reveals a profound regret and a determination to do whatever he can to repair any damage he has done.

“They all laughed.”

The men in the room laugh not at the joke, but as a form of relief. They are relieved that they have succeeded in the face of impossible odds, and that Darby has survived despite the huge odds against her. The laughter is a release vale for the tension, pain, and exhaustion that they have experienced over the previous weeks.

“Maybe they’ll understand one day.”

A member of the guilty law firm commits suicide. His final thought is desperate and misguided: There is nothing to understand beyond greed, as his family will have to come to terms with the fact that he broke the law and ignored morality in exchange for money. His suicide suggests that he knows that his actions are irredeemable.