To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Arrow Books. First published 1960.
This is a famous American book. At its core is a criminal case of the rape of a white woman, made out against a black man in the semi-rural Alabama town of Maycomb in the 1930s. But the novel is more than just that. It works in different ways, which, together, are strong enough to have kept the book in print all these many years.
The story is told by Jean Louise 'Scout' Finch, the nine-year old daughter of the widower Atticus Finch, who is the lawyer who defends the accused man. A kind and humane man of great integrity and courage, Atticus has an easy, loving relationship with his children - Scout and her older brother Jeremy 'Jem' Finch. He leaves them to their own devices most of the time, but, without imposing himself on them, teaches them all the right values, such as respect for all people, courtesy, egalitarianism, honesty and courage.
The first third of the book is mostly descriptions of the doings of Scout, Jem and their orphan friend Dill, who comes down from another town to spend the summer with his aunt, neighbour to the Finches. This part is thoroughly identifiable with some aspects of my own childhood, and that of other fictional characters such as Richmal Crompton's William. There is an element of southern Gothic horror in the goings-on at the lonely house situated at the end of the street, which the children's mythology, building on half-heard and little understood scraps of grown people's gossip about a retarded boy, has designated as the dwelling place of a monster. Scout and Jem begin to be made acquainted with the story of the rape and its aftermath when their father is appointed by the court as the defence lawyer. Their friends at school, and many of their neighbours, bully them and tease them and insult them for having a father who's a 'nigger lover'. When they confront their father with this charge, he only counsels patience and ahimsa. He does not explicitly defend his actions. He however makes it clear that he considers it his duty as a human being and as one who must say the truth to stand up for the wronged black man, despite acknowledging the futility of his egalitarian ideals in southern US, even a century after slavery had been abolished. His children get more and more involved in the case, finally being present in the courtroom when the trial is held, seated among the black relatives and supporters of the accused. They leave when the jury adjourns to consider the case, and learn only later that, upon its return, it pronounced the obviously unjust verdict of 'guilty' along with a death sentence. This part of the story then winds down with the tragic death of the prisoner trying to escape from prison, thus cheating the executioner. The rest of the book deals with the quiet aftermath, in which the Finches remain stigmatized by the white society for standing up for the black man. Jem grows up in this time, passing childhood into adolescence, though Scout remains the same. The final denouement reveals the true character of their 'mentally retarded' neighbour.
Harper Lee enunciates very liberal attitudes and ideals, but these go only so far. The most obvious sticking point to a contemporary, independent Indian (or, more generally, non-white, non-American) mind is the fact that all the doers, strong and not-so-strong, good and bad, are whites. As are all the thinkers. The blacks are all nice, but 'thick as a brick'. They are acted upon, they do not act. They are mostly all Uncle Toms. They never get angry at all the injustice they face, only sad and resigned. They keep turning the other cheek, even when they have no cheeks left to turn. While it is difficult not to like Atticus and to cheer him in what he does, any appreciation of his humane qualities are in the context of the knowledge that he appears great only because the rest of the whites are so nasty. Lee, of course, makes it a point to indicate that other whites are also fair-minded, and Finch is not the only one. But he is the hero of the story, and it is his character that stands out on sharp relief, presented to us by the author as a personification of her own thoughts and attitudes, to be admired and emulated.
The villains of the novel, the Ewells, are aggressively placed outside the pale of 'decent' human consideration, they are really nasty. Their character is set sharply against that of Atticus. This, of course, makes it easy and straightforward to love the lawyer. This choice of black and white by Lee, with very little grey, is what makes this novel less than great, despite being so popular. One must however consider, in the light of all what we know about Anglo-American society, that the Ewells may have been as much a victim of the hyper-libertarian ideals prevalent, then and now, as the blacks. They are dirt poor, and have completely regressive ideas. They are dirty, do not work, do not bathe, and their children do not go to school. They live amidst filth, and one can almost sense the author raising her skirt just above her ankles and holding a scented handkerchief to her nose as she tiptoes past their dwelling.
The writing is lovely, especially in the early parts of the book. But the sudden shift in the maturity level of Scout, when she starts to describe the court-room scenes, does not jell well with what has gone before. I suppose one must consider that the novel is not actually an account written by a young girl, but by an older women trying to faithfully reproduce her feelings and attitudes as a child. She does not however completely succeed in preventing her more mature thoughts from intruding.
The story is told by Jean Louise 'Scout' Finch, the nine-year old daughter of the widower Atticus Finch, who is the lawyer who defends the accused man. A kind and humane man of great integrity and courage, Atticus has an easy, loving relationship with his children - Scout and her older brother Jeremy 'Jem' Finch. He leaves them to their own devices most of the time, but, without imposing himself on them, teaches them all the right values, such as respect for all people, courtesy, egalitarianism, honesty and courage.
The first third of the book is mostly descriptions of the doings of Scout, Jem and their orphan friend Dill, who comes down from another town to spend the summer with his aunt, neighbour to the Finches. This part is thoroughly identifiable with some aspects of my own childhood, and that of other fictional characters such as Richmal Crompton's William. There is an element of southern Gothic horror in the goings-on at the lonely house situated at the end of the street, which the children's mythology, building on half-heard and little understood scraps of grown people's gossip about a retarded boy, has designated as the dwelling place of a monster. Scout and Jem begin to be made acquainted with the story of the rape and its aftermath when their father is appointed by the court as the defence lawyer. Their friends at school, and many of their neighbours, bully them and tease them and insult them for having a father who's a 'nigger lover'. When they confront their father with this charge, he only counsels patience and ahimsa. He does not explicitly defend his actions. He however makes it clear that he considers it his duty as a human being and as one who must say the truth to stand up for the wronged black man, despite acknowledging the futility of his egalitarian ideals in southern US, even a century after slavery had been abolished. His children get more and more involved in the case, finally being present in the courtroom when the trial is held, seated among the black relatives and supporters of the accused. They leave when the jury adjourns to consider the case, and learn only later that, upon its return, it pronounced the obviously unjust verdict of 'guilty' along with a death sentence. This part of the story then winds down with the tragic death of the prisoner trying to escape from prison, thus cheating the executioner. The rest of the book deals with the quiet aftermath, in which the Finches remain stigmatized by the white society for standing up for the black man. Jem grows up in this time, passing childhood into adolescence, though Scout remains the same. The final denouement reveals the true character of their 'mentally retarded' neighbour.
Harper Lee enunciates very liberal attitudes and ideals, but these go only so far. The most obvious sticking point to a contemporary, independent Indian (or, more generally, non-white, non-American) mind is the fact that all the doers, strong and not-so-strong, good and bad, are whites. As are all the thinkers. The blacks are all nice, but 'thick as a brick'. They are acted upon, they do not act. They are mostly all Uncle Toms. They never get angry at all the injustice they face, only sad and resigned. They keep turning the other cheek, even when they have no cheeks left to turn. While it is difficult not to like Atticus and to cheer him in what he does, any appreciation of his humane qualities are in the context of the knowledge that he appears great only because the rest of the whites are so nasty. Lee, of course, makes it a point to indicate that other whites are also fair-minded, and Finch is not the only one. But he is the hero of the story, and it is his character that stands out on sharp relief, presented to us by the author as a personification of her own thoughts and attitudes, to be admired and emulated.
The villains of the novel, the Ewells, are aggressively placed outside the pale of 'decent' human consideration, they are really nasty. Their character is set sharply against that of Atticus. This, of course, makes it easy and straightforward to love the lawyer. This choice of black and white by Lee, with very little grey, is what makes this novel less than great, despite being so popular. One must however consider, in the light of all what we know about Anglo-American society, that the Ewells may have been as much a victim of the hyper-libertarian ideals prevalent, then and now, as the blacks. They are dirt poor, and have completely regressive ideas. They are dirty, do not work, do not bathe, and their children do not go to school. They live amidst filth, and one can almost sense the author raising her skirt just above her ankles and holding a scented handkerchief to her nose as she tiptoes past their dwelling.
The writing is lovely, especially in the early parts of the book. But the sudden shift in the maturity level of Scout, when she starts to describe the court-room scenes, does not jell well with what has gone before. I suppose one must consider that the novel is not actually an account written by a young girl, but by an older women trying to faithfully reproduce her feelings and attitudes as a child. She does not however completely succeed in preventing her more mature thoughts from intruding.
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