Like the earlier Mr. Sammler's, Corde's mission is to be at the moral center of [The Dean's December], the worried and thoughtful person. And at that he is splendid. (p. 6)
[While in Rumania to attend the deathbed of his wife's mother] Corde is following the progress, back home, of a court case involving the murder of a student. Two blacks are accused of pushing him out of a window to his death. They claim he fell, and that he had anyway been asking for trouble. Corde has encouraged their prosecution, but without his interest the case would probably have gone the way of other such cases—postponement after postponement until the witnesses died or moved away, and eventual freedom for the killers. Some, including his nephew Mason, feel that Corde is failing to allow for the social conditions which led to the depravity of the accused blacks. Increasingly appalled by what he has been finding out about the legal system, hospitals, slums, social conditions generally, and the outlook for black people, Corde has written some controversial articles in Harper's telling what he sees.
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