| -- KrystalCommons - 16 Feb 2010
After today's discussion about Robinson, I'd like to add a different interpretation of his "Lawyers and Greed" speech.
Robinson hates that his fellow lawyers get caught up in a meaningless pursuit of money. He doesn't understand why they have become so lost. And he probably can't, because his experience is not that of his fellow lawyers. It serves as a good introduction, because like Robinson, the only perspective the reader has regarding the multitude of "greedy" lawyers is that of an outsider peering in.
It's not the full story. And as the book progresses, the reader gets an inside glimpse of the lawyers that Robinson eviscerates in his opening oration.
Through further vignettes, what emerges is that the greed is often an escape. Many lawyers are dissociative, but the culprit is their own uneasiness at the realities of their life. Deep down, their jobs make them uncomfortable. They hate their own skin, so they throw themselves into materialism and routine. They drink and they marry and they splurge and they jetset and they cheat and they divorce and they repeat. In short, they do everything in their power to keep their inner world distracted and quiet.
In the context of the larger book, Robinson has mistaken a symptom for a cause.
-- RonMazor - 16 Feb 2010 |