At one point, late in the novel, Stern sees that "The walls were closing in on Dixon, as on some Poe character. . . ."

In its revelation of the dark secrets embedded in families, The Burden of Proof may be an echo of a work like "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839). The tortured family conflicts in the novel have their literary roots as far back as Sophocles' Oedipus plays.

The image of the family disintegrating around the figure of the mother is also seen in Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night (1956). The quest for a more mature understanding of life also forms the basis of novels by two of Turow's favorite authors — Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1864-1869) and Saul Bellow's Herzog (1964).