Three features of Higgins’s communication stand out. First, Higgins relies
heavily on the character-character dialogue to perform the standard functions
of narration, namely, reporting about characters and events, interpreting those
reports, and evaluating them. Higgins uses the prosecutor as his surrogate to
convey not just to Clark but also to his audience how the legal system works.
In that way, he initially uses Clark as a surrogate for his audience and then
later as another surrogate for himself. Furthermore, as the prosecutor sum-
marizes Jackie’s behavior and predicts what will happen, he also interprets and
evaluates these things for Clark’s benefit. Higgins in turn uses the prosecutor’s
speech to inform his audience about how the legal system will respond to
Jackie’s behavior. Clark’s response contributes his share of interpreting as he
predicts the next chapter in the story of Jackie Brown versus the Legal System.
In this way, Clark’s response adds an important generalizing—and discourag-
ing—evaluation about the events of that story. Higgins uses the prosecutor’s
final lines to offer both Clark and his own audience some comfort, however
cold. And the ultimate agreement of the two men at the end of the passage
endorses Higgins’s communication to his audience about both the necessity
and the limitations of the legal system.
As this analysis suggests, character-character dialogue, like character nar-
ration, simultaneously works along two communicative tracks. The first track
is that between the characters and the second is that between the implied
author and his or her audience. I shall call communication along the first track
conversational disclosure and communication along the second track authorial
disclosure. In part 2, chapter 10, I explore the complexities of the relationship
between the two tracks more fully. Here I just note how seamlessly Higgins
brings the two tracks together.
The second salient feature of the passage is that Higgins severely restricts
the narrator’s functions. Higgins not only gives the narrator very few lines
but also limits his role almost entirely to that of a detached reporter who pro-
vides the necessary background for the dialogue (Jackie Brown sat; the clerk
called; the bailiff motioned) and identifies its speakers (the prosecutor said;
Clark said; and, in a very expansive mood, “the prosecutor said, taking Clark
by the arm”).
The third salient feature of the extract is the contrast between some aspects
of the ethics of the told, which ultimately highlight ethical deficiencies in the
legal system, and the ethics of the telling, which conveys a belief in rhetorical
concord at the level of both character-character and author-audience interac-
tions. The ethics of the told include both the ethical situations of the charac-
ters and the ethical values underlying the legal system described by Clark and
the prosecutor. All three characters are responding to their situations in ways
16 • CHAPTER 1