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< | The Tragedy of Metamorphosis into a Lawyer | >
> | Lawyers’ Metamorphosis: A Tragedy? | | | -- By JiMinShin - 19 Feb 2016
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< | In Metamorphosis by Kafka, the main character changes into a vermin, something like a cockroach. It is probably the one of the most despicable figures that a human being can imagine himself or herself turning into. | >
> | In Metamorphosis by Kafka, the main character changes into a vermin, something like a cockroach. In Robinson’s Metamorphosis, the main character Robinson offers somewhat different picture, a collective metamorphosis: lawyers turning into prisoners, and prisoners turning into lawyers. Robinson clearly depicts through his own idea of metamorphosis the degradation of the profession, the degradation of lawyering, but by mentioning “exacting justice” of metamorphosing them back at the end, he yet suggests that there remains a possibility for lawyers to come back, as lawyers, not as prisoners. This leaves lawyers, including practicing lawyers and would-be lawyers, with a question: what could we do to acquire exacting justice? | | | | |
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< | Perhaps you mean to use "imagine" in one sense, about the reader,
rather than in the other sense, about Gregor Samsa. But did
Gregor Samsa not find himself transformed in the night in the
same sense of "find" that Dante found himself in a dark wood, in
which the right way was lost? Does not the carapace of Gregor
Samsa exist in precisely the same way that the "selva oscura,"
or—for that matter—Mount Purgatory exist? To say
nothing whatever about Ovid, though one should.... | >
> | Degradation | | | | |
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> | Robinson makes an analogy between lawyers and prisoners, as if they are interchangeable. The clear implication is that the nature of lawyer includes a criminal aspect. In fact, he seems to think that it has become a dominant characteristic of the profession. Robinson is conscious of it throughout the poem and does not bother to hide his thinking. His speech begins with a tale of a rich lawyer and his lament, the demise of the profession due to greed; then a Defense Attorney who wanted his “dumb” client dead and a “sexy” prosecutor who showered upon the client numerous exaggerated criminal charges. Robinson himself is not the exception. Robinson points out that lawyers, including himself, do wrongs or defend people who have done wrongs, and make a lucrative “business” out of it. He describes it as a major growing industry. There is a sense of immorality, injustice in lawyering, as prisoners are morally blameworthy, and the parallel Robinson draws between lawyers and prisoners is explicit. | | | | |
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> | The fact that lawyers mostly do not commit overt, violent crimes as prisoners have done, or they simply have not been arrested and prosecuted yet, is not a comforting factor considering the proximity of lawyering to evil. As Robinson quotes Kafka, lawyers are “never far from evil.” Lawyers are always around the police, as criminals are. They may fall anytime without even realizing. They have power; they have money. If they do not have either, most would willingly and zealously follow after them. They want privilege. Their career is the most important interest. They are modern aristocrats with “two wives, four cars, three houses, two precociously gifted Ivy League children.” And they are so self-consciously aware of the fact that they earing all these through their faults, their wrongs, their willful disregard. The degradation of the profession is indubitable. | | | | |
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< | In Robinson’s Metamorphosis, the main character Robinson offers an interesting idea of metamorphosis too. | >
> | Lawyers are successful people, but they are deprived of their essence. The degradation has become almost intrinsic now. It should have been, and should be “lawyers and justice,” but “lawyers and greed” instead. In that aspect, they are like prisoners. They are physically free, but morally suppressed, spiritually confined, chained; chained to what they have achieved; money, power, and privilege; too hard to let go of now. Lawyers have metamorphosed into prisoners. They are prisoners to everything they have so eagerly fought for. | | | | |
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This is mere connective tissue in a place where the single most important sentence in the essay, the one declaring the theme, ought to have been.
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> | Exacting Justice | | | | |
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< | He proposes what he calls a collective metamorphosis: lawyers turning into prisoners, and prisoners turning into lawyers. Robinson seems to be implying that lawyers turning into prisoners, and prisoners turning into lawyers would be as horrendous as a person turning into a vermin to them. | >
> | Nevertheless, at the very end of the poem, Robinson implies that lawyers are not completely without hope. Lawyers who have become prisoners, can metamorphose back into lawyers. In Metamorphosis by Kafka, the vermin never regained its original human form. It died as a vermin. Lawyers may not. They may once again return from prisoners to lawyers. Robinson calls it a “form of exacting justice.” It is exacting justice because it is straightening what has gone astray. Restoring lawyers who have become prisoners back to real lawyers. So there is a possibility of redemption. Robinson’s metamorphosis is a tragedy in a sense that lawyers have become what they were not supposed to be, but not the end of the story. | | | | |
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< | I don't see why that in particular is what he is implying. You
made that observation about Kafka's Metamorphosis, but that
observation doesn't thereby become what the Metamorphosis as
someone else's metaphor implies. Sure, some ironic connotation
of that kind is present, but perhaps, as with all irony, Robinson
is implying something else too, at the very least? And after
all, this is not the only image in the poem that addresses: (a)
transformation, (b) degradation, (c) the proximity of lawyering
to evil, or (d) the concept of our desert, the exacting justice
we deserve. To say that Robinson "seems to be implying" such a
flat, stale, and unprofitable implication amidst everything else
the poem has going on risks, I should say, mistaking a mountain
for a molehill. | >
> | Challenges for Lawyers | | | | |
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> | What could lawyers do to achieve this exacting justice correcting the degradation? Robinson does not clearly give an answer to this question. He claims that there is nothing wrong with prisoners metamorphosing back to lawyers, but does not teach us how. His poem simply ends with a hint of redemption. Then what could be the right answer to the question? What could replace success and affluence, and fill the insufficiency created by both? The truth is, nobody seems to know the definite answer. Should lawyers only work for public interest and strive for good? Should lawyers protect only the weak and poor? It is certainly an option, as making living out of the tears of widow and orphan is, but not the fundamental of lawyering, a real lawyer. | | | | |
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> | Robinson may suggest another hint. He defines a real lawyer as a person who “knows how to take care of a legal problem.” This ability to face and solve legal problems is what essentially makes a lawyer a lawyer. It is true that lawyers are never far from evil. They have chance to do some good, but inevitably will have to put up with standing up for some wrongs. Material success, Mammon, will always be there for temptation. Fame may inspire arrogance and overconfidence. They are prone to fall. But that is not the point. All glories and corruptions following after lawyering are extra choices. What real lawyers should strive for is confronting and solving legal problems, the very practice of lawyering, not byproducts which are outside the scope. They will be required to make choices after achieving the requisite competence. Those choices could be good and just, and possibly bad and unjust. After all, lawyers are not far from evil. But as long as they are lawyering, not aiming at things extra to legal matters, they will not be evil themselves. | | | | |
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< | It is not difficult to see why it would be so horrific for a lawyer to suddenly wake up and find himself in prison one morning, but why would it be as terrible for a prisoner to find himself in a nice suit, instead of a prison uniform, and inside a court or an office, instead of a prison cell? His use of language indicates that in fact, he believes turning into lawyer is actually more dreadful than turning into a prisoner. | | | | |
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By this point in the argument, a thing you observed that was in
danger of being overemphasized at the expense of more resonant
meanings has crowded them out altogether. We are left not with
a deeper grasp of the whole poem that was made, but rather with
our hands firmly wrapped around one shard of what it has been
shattered into by the application of a very minute but heavy
hammer.
Certainly, Robinson does not mean that it would be terrible for prisoners only because most of them would lack necessary legal knowledge required for the profession. Then what is so “horrendous” about becoming a lawyer, even for a prisoner?
Robinson makes an analogy between lawyers and prisoners, as if they are interchangeable. There seem to be two implications: one clear, and another one rather obscure. The clear implication is that the nature of lawyer includes a criminal aspect. In fact, he seems to think that it is a dominant characteristic of the profession. Robinson is conscious of it throughout the story and does not bother to hide his thinking. His speech begins with a point about a rich lawyer and his lament, his greed; then a Defense Attorney who wanted his “dumb” client dead and a “sexy” prosecutor who showered upon the client numerous exaggerated criminal charges; “nonviolent felonies committed by our sisters and brothers over here in the World Financial Center; criminal lawyers who have to be always around criminals, and the police; and of course, an imaginary, unfortunate prisoner who metamorphosed into a lawyer and now has to defend a doctor who did not “properly disinfect one of those jeweled barbells,” consequently permanently damaging “a twenty-year-old girl’s nasal membrane.”
Robinson points out that lawyers do wrongs or defend people who have done wrongs, and make a lucrative “business” out of it. There is a sense of immorality, injustice in lawyering, as prisoners are morally blameworthy, although lawyers mostly do not commit overt, violent crimes as prisoners have done, or lawyers simply have not been arrested and prosecuted yet. So lawyers share some similarities with prisoners. There exists an impression of lack of morality in both classes. But still, would not one say that lawyers are better off than prisoners? Yet strangely enough, Robinson calls lawyers turning into prisoners a “weird, nasty dream,” while calling prisoners turning into lawyers the “most horrendous nightmare of [one’s] life.” Why is being a lawyer worse than being a prisoner?
The answer to this question is the obscure implication from Robinson’s collective metamorphosis, since Robinson never clearly explains the reason for his expression. Comparison with prisoners is therefore necessary. The biggest disadvantage of being a prisoner is physical imprisonment. Prisoners are deprived of their physical freedom due to what they have done. Lawyers are not. Then what are they deprived of, as the consequence of being lawyers? Justice Holmes. Jr. in the Path of the Law may suggest a hint:
“We cannot all be Descartes or Kant, but we all want happiness. And happiness, I am sure from having known many successful men, cannot be won simply by being counsel for great corporations and having an income of fifty thousand dollars. An intellect great enough to win the prize needs other food besides success.”
Lawyers are successful people. At least most of them are. They are affluent, powerful, privileged. Yet Holmes says there is more to it. Material wealth is insufficient. And that is what Robinson mockingly exclaims in the beginning of the story. Lawyers with “two wives, four cars, three houses, two precociously gifted Ivy League children…one sunny morning…awakens” in a state of lament, due to the “demise” of the profession.
Maybe you should pay more attention to that "awakens" part, right there at the front of the poem. Remind you of anything?
They are not happy. They were not supposed to be what they are now. They are so self-consciously aware of their faults, their wrongs, their responsibilities. It should have been, and should be “lawyers and justice,” not “lawyers and greed.” Lawyers are deprived of their essence. They are physically free, but morally suppressed, spiritually confined, chained; chained to what they have achieved; money, power, and privilege; too hard to let go of now. Prisoners are paying their due. Lawyers are voluntarily digging into their own depravity as if they were digging gold. The degree of fall is incomparable. And as for prisoners, it is over once they are imprisoned. As for lawyers, falling is present continuous.
Robinson’s collective metamorphosis is a hypothesis, a fantasy.
As opposed to what?
Prisoners will not suffer misfortune of suddenly finding themselves being a lawyer one morning. But there are people who are sure to turn into lawyers: law school students. Not all of them will chase after material success, but most of them will; some willingly, and some unwillingly. They will have chance to do some good, and will have to put up with committing some wrongs. And will slowly metamorphose into a lawyer, as a cocoon turns into a butterfly, or a moth, or a vermin. There is something tragic about this process of change, especially because people voluntarily choose to become lawyers, and they think, and they are encouraged to think they have made a wonderful choice. They may eventually find themselves lamenting or they may not. They may never realize it. A bigger tragedy.
Or perhaps the point of metamorphosis, from Ovid to Kafka by
way of almost all the poets in between—Marlow and Goethe
come particularly to mind—and not a few before is
something larger and more complicated than either "tragedy" or
"happiness." The biologists have borrowed a word with the
largest possible meaning to apply it in the smallest possible
way, but we are not therefore compelled to follow their
example.
I think the route forward here is to cut loose the
anchor cable holding you to a very confined interpretation of
one image in a complex work. I think the other major task is
to pay attention to the words you did not interpret at all in
the very small part of the landscape you surveyed: "exacting
justice."
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