‘To Kill a Mockingbird’: A Southern Tragedy
A review of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, by Harper Lee; J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1960.
To Kill a Mockingbird is, by all accounts, a very American novel, which I suppose is why it is widely read in what Americans call ‘middle’ and ‘high school’. It deals with what many would consider the foundational tensions of the United States: race, class, justice and individual conscience. It also tackles paradoxes of American life: the persistence of idealism in the face of harsh reality, the promise of equality and the perpetuation of prejudice, the exaltation of the individual and the weight of social injustice. I would add that To Kill a Mockingbird, despite its moral seriousness, also contains a great deal of warmth and humour, and that — says this Brit—is very American.
The setting is Maycomb, a sleepy Alabama town in the 1930s. Its narrator is Scout Finch, a child as-yet unversed in the confusing ways of adulthood. She and her brother Jem enjoy lives in which, in the best sense, nothing seems to happen. Then it does. A Black man, Tom Robinson, is accused of rape. He is alleged to have assaulted Mayella Ewell, a white woman from the town’s poorest family. Atticus Finch, father of Scout and Jem, is tasked with defending Tom, and must stand alone against the bigotry of the town, and must make the case for justice when most in the town have made their minds up. The kids are drawn to Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbour who never leaves the house and arouses fear and fascination.
A Black man, Tom Robinson, is accused of rape.
The heart of the novel is the trial. Atticus argues the facts: Tom could not have committed the crime, he claims, because the evidence is flimsy. The question is whether facts, logic and justice can hold their own in the face of the deep-rooted racism of a small Alabama town. But the story, which deals with weighty themes with great sensitivity and skill, chiefly concerns children, and the events which, in the case of all of us, lead the scales to fall from our eyes. It is, then, a bildungsroman, Scout’s coming-of-age story. The story is about the end or perhaps the destruction of innocence as we realise that the world is not what we thought it to be.
It is, then, a bildungsroman, Scout’s coming-of-age story.
The novel explores the difference between seeing and knowing. Tom Robinson is thought guilty by the people of Maycomb not because of who he is but because of who they imagine him to be. They see him and they project onto him all their own ideas, all of their own fears. Boo Radley is considered frightening because no one knows anything about him. Even Atticus, an upright man, imagines too much. He imagines the law to be decent, even when those who uphold it are not. He thinks justice always flows from the truth, telling his children that if they will just present what is true, justice will follow. And of course it explores innocence: the innocence of the child and the innocence of the man who is wrongfully accused. Hence the title: ‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em,’ says Atticus, ‘but remember, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’
Lee writes in a clean, deliberate, unadorned sort of way, with precise dialogue and dry humour. She is most effective when describing those small, revealing moments of childhood. If some characters, like Tom Robinson, are only sketched, not richly drawn, it is because, like Scout, Lee chooses to observe, and to consider what happens when we look, and don’t just see. Scout starts out in a world where people are good or bad, and ends in a world beyond the simple moral categories of childhood, where goodness is a quiet force, not always enough to vanquish ignorance and stupidity. The book remains with us not because of what takes place, but because of what does not. In the end, the mockingbird does not sing. It simply disappears, leaving behind only the echo of what might have been.
