The Street Lawyer

Grisham uses the color white as a symbol for neutralizing, cleansing, or sterilizing a tainted object or environment. Early in the novel, the white is represented in the form of snow. When Michael first visits the 14th Street Legal Clinic, he is hesitant to park his Lexus in the clinic’s crime-ridden neighborhood, but when he leaves, he sees that his “Lexus [is] still parked at the curb, already covered with an inch of snow” (42). The Lexus stands out in this neighborhood, but the (white) snow solves that problem; under the snow, it could be any vehicle. Grisham employs the symbol here both as foreshadowing and irony. The covering of the car indicates that the real crime is the Lexus, not the dilapidated neighborhood, as Michael assumes. In this case, the Lexus is also symbolic of the materialistic lifestyle that Michael will soon eschew in order to belong and fit into the street-law community. Later, when Michael first volunteers at the emergency shelter and again worries about parking his Lexus in a neighborhood he views as sketchy, he is relieved and proven wrong: “My car was sitting where I left it, covered with new snow” (76).