61 pages • 2 hours read
John GrishamThe Testament
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Phelan’s Will
When preparing his holographic will, Phelan has clearly thought through how to inflict maximum pain on his children. After reading it, Durban notes that Phelan was still “calling the shots” (30). Yet despite his careful staging of events—both with the drafting of his will and the spectacle of the recorded psychiatric exam—Phelan ultimately is not able to control the outcome. His children receive a sizeable inheritance of $50 million each. The only person who does not receive any money is the one to whom he tried to give it: Rachel. On this level, the will symbolizes the unpredictability of outcomes. The will also serves a second symbolic purpose. Phelan refers to it as his “testament,” which is also a word that can refer to mission work. In this sense, the will symbolizes the responsibility to create existential meaning.
The Pantanal
Nate’s search for Rachel takes him through the Pantanal, the largest wetlands in the world. His journey is depicted as a contest of sorts between humans and nature. Technology can only go so far in helping Nate and his guides navigate the dangers of flooding, sudden storms, and deadly animals. Their flyover resulted in a plane crash. Jevy’s boat sinks, and Nate contracts dengue fever. While the Pantanal poses dangers, humans likewise threaten the Pantanal, whose flooded rivers Jevy describes as being “the size of Colorado” (203). He further explains how large companies are destroying the Pantanal with various projects, but adds: “Sometimes I think it’s too big for them to destroy (203-04). The Pantanal functions as a symbol of tensions between tradition and change.
Vultures
At the beginning of the novel, Phelan describes his children as vultures circling their prey, that being himself and his money. Vultures function as a symbol on two levels. On one level, they represent Phelan’s view of his children as predators who see him only for what he can give them. Their behavior after his death confirms his assessment, largely because of the conditions that he set. On another level, comparing his family members to vultures foreshadows the events to come: the children fighting for an inheritance, the lawyers preying on the family members’ hunger for their father’s money, and the press circling around the story. By jealously hoarding his fortune and seeking always to expand it at the expense of forging social bonds with others, Phelan himself renders his fortune a prize to be won by a predatory contest.
Balance
Grisham threads the motif of balance throughout the novel’s themes as an ideal that is difficult to achieve. The novel explores this ideal in micro- and macrocosmic contexts. At the macro level, the tension between tradition and change is shown to be difficult to resolve, and the novel provides no simple answers. It acknowledges that both can be harmful and helpful, depending on how and by whom they are engaged with and enacted. At the family and community level, there are positive outcomes in the novel when individuals balance their own needs and desires with their responsibilities toward others.
The Phelan children are largely depicted as imbalanced, except for Rachel. Josh Stafford provides an exemplar of balance. Judge Wycliff, too, manages to temper his individual desire for an exciting case that will thrust him into the spotlight by maintaining a proper regard for his professional role. By the end of the novel, Nate is working toward greater balance in his life: Helping Rachel and attending to his spiritual life have helped him to move beyond his self-destructive cycles and given him a sense of mission in life. The motif of balance hence creates a sense of resolution at the end of the novel.
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