Presumed Guilty
69 pages • 2-hour read
Scott TurowPresumed Guilty
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Symbols & Motifs
Cellphones
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, substance use, and addiction.
Cellphones are a motif Turow uses throughout the narrative to depict miscommunications and develop conflicts in Aaron’s relationships. Aaron is a solitary and introverted person, not apt to share his thoughts regularly. When he experiences especially troubling events—like his many breakups with Mae—he has a habit of “going dark.” He turns off his phone and voicemail so he can be completely alone to process his feelings. Aaron’s cellphone’s status reflects his solitary nature and his belief that no one else understands his feelings. For his friends and family, the inability to contact Aaron causes concern and anxiety. Especially after Aaron’s drug convictions, Aaron’s family can’t help but believe the worst about what Aaron is doing, since he won’t explain himself with a simple text message.
Cellphones also help Aaron understand that he and Mae aren’t on the same page in their relationship. The couple promised to turn off their phones to focus on each other and plan their future together, but Aaron realizes that Mae isn’t ready to take that next step because she’s too selfish. Critically, Aaron keeps his pledge to stay off his phone, but Mae doesn’t. To Aaron, Mae seems more interested in her cellphone than in him. Mae’s cellphone use—taking selfies and videos every few minutes—proves to Aaron that Mae is still too immature to commit to him. When Aaron takes Mae’s phone away from her and shuts it off, he symbolically closes off their relationship for good.
Insiders and Outsiders
The locals of Skageon County view the world in terms of insiders and outsiders, and this motif illustrates how characters move through this setting either with ease or difficulty. Most people in rural Skageon are working class, conservative, and white. The text establishes Skageon in contrast to its surrounding counties, like Kindle (an urban center) and Kwaegon (predominantly people of color). Skageon has small, tight-knit towns, which present a challenge for newcomers. Rusty, as a transplant from Kindle, feels some apprehension about his integration into the community, but Aaron, a Black man, feels the community’s suspicion to the extreme. Even as a child, Bea sensed that people looked at Aaron with an “ingrained belief that this child just didn’t belong here” (107). Aaron describes having to confront this kind of suspicion daily, which led him to feel isolated and different.
Insider and outsider distinctions come into play during the trial by immediately placing Aaron in a position of disadvantage. Marenago is also rural and white, but Aaron is even more of an outsider because the townsfolk don’t recognize him at all, like they might in Skageon. Aaron is fighting against Jackdorp, who is both a familiar and respected face in the community. To overcome this disadvantage, Rusty tries to stack the jury with people who are open-minded and thus less likely to judge a person for whether they adhere to or exist outside of demographic norms. The motif of insiders and outsiders helps develop the theme of The Influence of Personal Biases on Legal Justice.
Addiction
Drug addiction is a reality for both Aaron and Mae, and the text also employs the language of addiction as a motif to describe the intensity of the characters’ relationships. Aaron and Mae’s relationship was riddled with drug use, so Aaron also understands his gravitation toward Mae through the same lens. He explains that his love with Mae was so exhilarating that he always felt pulled back to her, even though he knew she was bad for him: “Reverend Spruce—or my mom—they both thought Mae was part of the addiction, that I was like addicted to Mae. And that when I was with her, I’d do whatever she wanted, just like I’d do for drugs” (480). When Aaron was in recovery from drug use, his family also hoped he’d be similarly recovering from his relationship with Mae, but when he sneaks off with her to Harold’s Woods, his family assumes he relapsed—literally with drugs and symbolically with Mae.
Bea describes her affair with Hardy with similarly intense language of reluctant magnetism and irrational behavior. Bea carried on the secret sexual relationship with her high-school flame because of the thrill it gave her in her otherwise monotonous rural life. Even when Bea was in loving relationships, she was so used to the habit of going back to Hardy that she didn’t want to let go of the relationship. It’s Rusty who finally helps Bea quit Hardy so she can experience love and not just lust, though it still takes her several years to break off with Hardy for good.
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