The Criminal Justice System

By containing chapters that zero in on Nick’s point of view, the novel is able to explore the emotional toll that flaws in the criminal justice system can take on the lives of innocent people. While the majority of the book contains alternating chapters that go back and forth between the two main characters, Lance and Morgan, the book also spends four chapters in Nick’s point of view. These chapters start after he is arraigned, when he spends his first day in jail. They follow him as he tries to make sense of what has happened to his life, and how he was going to survive jail: “This was so confusing. He felt like he’d been dumped into a reality TV show with no description of the game he was supposed to play” (154). The confusion and fear that Nick feels...