In this essay I will discuss three general topics and the differences and similarities they show between the film "A Time to Kill" starring Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey and the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee. These general topics will be racial prejudice, justice, and morality. I will discuss the role of racial prejudice in court proceedings and say what would have happened if Carl Lee and Tom Robinson had been white. In the section on justice I will discuss how the results would have played out in real life if both men had been judged based on the crimes they actually committed and if they had been judged by the law without extenuating circumstances or racial bias influencing the verdict. I will discuss these themes using examples that include Nathan Radley and Tom Robinson from To Kill a Mockingbird and Carl Lee Hailey from “A Time to Kill.” Racial prejudice greatly affects each story and in two quite different but very similar ways as it is the sole reason why Carl Lee and Tom face their respective charges in court, but for very different reasons. If they had been white or if racism had not been so prevalent in their communities, the stories would not have simply ended with a different outcome, but the entire story would have changed. If Carl Lee had been white, his daughter would also have been white, meaning the men who raped her would have been sentenced to death immediately or would not have raped her at first because they feared legal backlash; if they had done it again, Carl Lee could have walked away without consequences due to racial prejudice not preventing Carl Lee from receiving a fair trial in which he would have been found innocent almost immediately. If... middle of paper... the man who was only falsely accused of a crime is shot and killed. However, moral justice is served in at least one story; in "A Time to Kill" Carl Lee Hailey is found innocent by reason of insanity and set free while Tom Robinson is shown dying within the walls of a prison. In the morality vein both stories seem to agree that murder can be justified; in "A Time to Kill" Carl Lee is given the moral high ground to kill people because before their deaths they raped his daughter, in To Kill a Mockingbird Nathan Radley stabs Bob Ewell to save the lives of two innocent children and is given the moral high ground to do so. All in all, the stories have enough commonalities and agree with each other on enough themes to be compared to each other, but have enough differences between each other to make for two very compelling stories to experience..