Chapters 4 and 5 Summary

In chapter four, Avis writes of her preoccupied near-obsession with Jackson, his cause and his experience, and of how her deepening sense of discovery of the reality of his situation increases her awareness of just how complicit she and her class are in perpetuating that situation. She describes her interviews with the company lawyer that argued, and won, the case against giving Jackson compensation, who runs away from the conversation when confronted with uncomfortable truths, with the men who owned the company, who accept no responsibility, and with their "cultured" wives, who speak of the rightness of their position, both legal and financial. She also describes her interview with a journalist who wrote about the case and who speaks of how, if he or any journalist wrote of a truth that contradicted or challenged the principles of the paper's corporate owners...