Coming Of Age In Maycomb, Alabama Edition

To Kill A Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

If I had to choose 5 books that not only represents the canon of American literature—while also defining what America is for someone who only had a remedial knowledge of our country—To Kill A Mockingbird easily cracks that list for me.^[1] It might be the perfect American novel, not because it was groundbreaking or because Harper Lee’s prose outshines everyone before and after her. It’s the perfect American novel because of Atticus Finch—the classic Ideal Man—and Scout Finch—a wonderful character that mirrors social metamorphosis perfectly.

I usually give no weight to all-time lists of any sort when it comes to movies but a few years ago the American Film Institute had their 50 greatest heroes list and Atticus Finch was number one, beating out a myriad of heroes that either required weapons (Indiana Jones, James Bond), or became significantly larger than life within their story (Rocky Balboa, Jefferson Smith).

This is not an accident.

Atticus Finch, I think, is one of the few characters in American literature (and cinema) that everyone wishes they could be on a certain level. We wish that we had his stoicism and unimpeded objectivity. We wish that we would do the right thing more often. The best thing about the novel—the thing that makes it so identifiable to generations of people—is that Harper Lee thoroughly humanizes Atticus Finch. He is entirely relatable, regardless if you grew up in the ’30′s or ten years ago. He is not overly idealized to a fault, or more metaphor than character (see: John Galt).

To me, one of the greatest scenes in the book is when Atticus and the kids stay at Jack’s house. (Jack is Atticus’s brother.) Atticus and Jack are talking about the trial of Tom Robinson and Atticus’s fears of what the aftermath might bring to his family:

“‘[...] But do you think I could face my children otherwise? You know what’s going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get Jem and Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all, without catching Maycomb’s usual disease. Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand… I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. I hope they trust me enough… Jean Louise?’

“My scalp jumped. I stuck my head around the corner. ‘Sir?’

“‘Go to bed.’

“I scurried to my room and went to bed. [...] But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said.”

This passage perfectly displays not only the relationship between a father and his daughter, but also the very essence of both: Atticus and his instinctive nature to protect his family, and Scout and her wonderful naivete that acts as the lens by which we see the story unfold. Finally, the fact that the book is written from the perspective of Scout as an adult providing us with a story from her childhood makes the last half of the last sentence from the above passage all the more flawless.

Before I delve any further into this review, here is a summary of the book (in case you have forgotten, or are one of the few people who weren’t required to read it in high school). To Kill A Mockingbird is set in Maycomb, Alabama in the early 1930′s. It follows the Finch’s (Atticus, Jem, and Scout, and their maid Calpurnia; the kids’ mother died when they were young) up until 1936, the year in which the trial of Tom Robinson—a black man accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell—took place and in which Mayella’s father Bob tried to take revenge on Atticus for defending a black man. Before the trial starts, the book is primarily about Jem and Scout and their interactions and experiences with people ranging from the enigmatic (the unseen, walking rumor mill, specter of a man, Boo Radley) to the walks-of-life characters like their summertime friend Dill and other characters like Miss Maudie and Aunt Alexandra.

The trial is the turning point of the book for obvious reasons: even though Scout and Jem are 10 and 14 respectively, the trial’s verdict and aftermath provide Lee with enough to explore themes involving death of innocence, gender roles, and a questioning of how certain wrongs can exist in a society that holds freedom and humanity as default values.

Mark Twain realized many decades previously that the best way to handle race is to put a child square in the middle of it, and let them be the lens by which adults are forced to look at things, and Harper Lee with this book does a job on par with Twain in this respect. When Atticus sits in front of the jail by himself at night to ensure that no one attempts to get to Tom Robinson, Lee inserts Jem and Scout directly into the scene. The kids are the ones who cause the five men who have arrived to get Tom to turn back around. The men can’t bear to bust in, not when children are looking at them in the face and asking why they are here. And in the hands of a lesser writer this scene would probably have been too ham-fisted or possibly even grossly preachy, but Harper Lee wrote it in such a way that felt real because Scout’s voice was already so wonderful and so textured that we as readers knew that the men were probably not going to hurt Atticus and his children. But what was unexpected about it was its matter-of-factness. Were they going to hurt you, Atticus? the children wondered. No, they just wanted to scare me; these men, they might’ve been acting differently tonight but in the morning they’ll still be the same good people. You can’t damn people who become temporarily misguided, Atticus explains.

I read this book in sophomore year English class and I liked it a lot. I had planned on re-reading it again a couple times previous to this but each time I found another book that caught my eye. Going into this reading I knew that I would probably still like it, that it would still resonate with me. But I was really surprised with how much I unequivocally love this book. Which leads me to a few words about Harper Lee.

To Kill A Mockingbird is the only book that she ever published. Like J.D. Salinger, she became a recluse (how many people know that she is still alive?) and as she got older she refused to talk about the book even if she allowed someone to speak with her. It is truly unbelievable that not only was Lee’s first book a huge success (it won the Pulitzer, as well as it being a point of reference during the Civil Rights era) but it was also remade into a perfect and iconic movie.^[2]

Has the success of Mockingbird provided more negatives than positives for Harper Lee? Why won’t she talk about the book? Did Truman Capote (Lee’s childhood friend and basis for the character Dill) help write the novel? I don’t know any of those answers. And the fact is that when Harper Lee dies, none of that will really matter. She left us one gift—a timeless, socially relevant gift—and we will always have it to use as a basis to better explain (and learn from) a particular era of American history.

[1] The other four books (in no particular order): The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, and Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. Rounding out the top 10 would be (again, in no particular order): The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and flip a coin between The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

[2] I think the only major thing left out from the book in the movie is Atticus hinting at incest during his cross-examination of Mayella. Other than that, the movie is practically a carbon copy of the book.