Storytelling for Lawyers by Philip Meyer Page B

system; he is a true individual, true to himself and his ideals, unbending in spirit, unyielding in the belief of spirit.” 13 These heroes, because of their strength, individuality, and spirituality, are readily misunderstood by the community.
    According to Field, the character of the Western hero in the classical Western melodrama is defined by two specific challenges:
    One is the physical challenge, which requires the hero to perform a courageous act during battle, like saving a life, or an entire village.… The other heroic challenge is the spiritual challenge, an adventure during which the hero experiences the transformation of consciousness and becomes “realized,” then returns with the ancient and profound message that has echoes through time, like “see God in each other.” 14
    These are the precise challenges that Silkwood meets in Spence’s closing argument. First, there is the physical challenge of her battle with Kerr-McGee to save the community (even if it ultimately results in her own self-sacrifice and death). Second, Spence’s Silkwood undergoes a transformation of consciousness in herself and returns to reveal to the community her message of discovery. In answer to one of the riddles he poses about Silkwood for the jury to solve, “Who was she?,” Spence suggests this answer: “I say she was a prophet.” 15
    Perhaps the greatest narrative and structural challenge for Spence, however, is to make Kerr-McGee—the corporation—into the all-powerful villain demanded by melodrama. Remember that in melodrama, the virtue of the hero—and the effectiveness of the story—can be measured only against the strength of the antagonistic force. So to elevate to heroic status not only Silkwood but also the jury (who must write the final chapter and ending to the story) and Spence himself (possibly akin to the three nautical heroes in
Jaws
), Kerr-McGee must come alive as an effective and singular melodramatic villain. Spence must coalesce all of the forces of antagonism aligned against Silkwood into an organic and clearly visualized entity. Kerr-McGee must become The Beast, and The Beast must come alive to enlist the empathy of the jury, inspiring a desire to complete the story with a powerful and transformative ending, and to provide a meaningful coda to the tale. The genre of melodrama demands villainy, and Spence’s initial task is to fashion the defendant into this role.
C. The Steady State and the Arrival of the Trouble
    Spence finally opens his story with a depiction of an anterior steady state that is unlike the anterior steady state depicted in
Jaws
(the summer on the idyllic Amity with the swimmers at play) or in
High Noon
(the wedding ceremony of Amy and Kane after Kane has cleaned up the town, with the grateful townspeople in attendance). Spence’s storytelling anticipates narrative expectations of the juror audience in the late 1970s. His opening subtly references two compelling and profoundly relevant cultural events that took place during the second and third weeks of the Silkwood trial and that had been covered extensively in the news and popular media: the release of the movie
The China Syndrome
, about a devastating nuclear power accident, and the real-world accident at Three Mile Island that the movie seemed to presciently anticipate.
    The setting of the core past-tense story is Crescent, Oklahoma. When the story begins the trouble has already arrived. Spence could have begun differently, but instead he opens his story at a moment when the powerful villain already holds the upper hand and the innocent community is in its vice-like grip:
    It was a time of infamy, and a time of deceit, corporate dishonesty. A time when men used men like disposable commodities—like so much expendable property. It was a time when corporations fooled the public, were more concerned with public image than with the truth.
    It was a time when the government