Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal Judgement Day Pale Fire Journal | Page 58

Shade having another heart attack because even not following one of the guidelines given by the doctors could have led to another heart attack, and John did not follow three: sticking to a healthy diet, not drinking alcohol, and going to high altitudes. I would like you, as the jury, to keep these things in mind as you are voting on whether my client is guilty or not guilty because the evidence points to not guilty.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the second felony my client is being accused of committing is stalking John Shade. The prosecutor is going to tell you how this was written by a stalker. My client is not a stalker. The prosecutor will try to convince you by using evidence. He will say that my client rushed to get the poem before John Shade was buried in his grave because he could not wait to get his hands on the work of the person who he admires. He will tell you that he also greatly enjoyed the time that he spent with John Shade because of this he will try to convince you that my client thought of him and John Shade as more than friends. He will use evidence that he had used in his previous argument stating that John was being watched. My client, the author, is not John Shade’ s stalker. My client is the exiled King of a foreign country called Zembla.
The reason my client rushed to get the poem before John Shade“ reached the grave”( 16) is because he wanted to make sure that the country he was once king of was portrayed in the light that it should be before it was published. He wanted to make sure that Zembla was persevered, so you can imagine his sadness when the country he was once king of was rarely mentioned in John Shade’ s poem. There was nothing my client could do. John Shade was already dead, there was no possible way for him to ask Shade to fix his poem. My client being able to portray Zembla in the right light and preserve Zembla was one of the reasons he wrote the commentary. Right now, you are probably thinking I am crazy but hear me out. My client owns an original painting by Pablo Picasso. For the most part, I can guarantee that no one on the jury today owns an original Pablo Picasso. Some may have not seen an original, yet. Today an original Pablo Picasso would sell for around 120 million dollars. This means that my client has a lot money, and royalty has a lot of money. I know money is not enough to prove that my client is the exiled King of Zembla, but what if I told you that my client’ s resemblance to the exiled King of Zembla is uncanny. Pictures of the exiled King of Zembla“ had not infrequently appeared in America during the first months of the Zemblan Revolution”( 264). When a visiting professor from Oxford came to visit, he was constantly stating“ that the resemblance was absolutely unheard of”( 265). It was explained“ that all bearded Zemblans resemble one another”( 265), but King Charles, the exiled King of Zembla,“ wore no beard”
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