Book Review: To Kill a Mockingbird

I had read To Kill a Mockingbird, many years ago: so long ago that I had forgotten most of the story and all of the characters. I have, however, been reminded of it many times in recent decades as just about everyone in my family has read the book and loved it. I even know a dog named “Scout” after the narrator of the novel.

My daughter and I had recently been through a challenging and unsuccessful experience together. We thought we would mark the hard work we had put into the joint venture and the shared experiences. My daughter bought two copies of the book, one for her and one for me. We wrote one another some phrases to mark the event on the flyleaf of our respective books. I could not think of a more excellent book for such a purpose.

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the “tired old town” of Maycomb, Alabama. The town is fictional although the novel, for those who know their Alabaman geography well, provides the town with a geographical relationship to the real city of Mobile, Alabama. The novel is narrated by a young girl, Scout Finch. It traces Scout’s experiences of the world over a number of years as she moves from her last summer before starting school at age seven to being a pre-teenager when the novel ends. Scout’s adventures are shared with her older brother, Jem, and, during the long summer holidays, with Dill, a boy who spends those summers in Maycomb, staying with his aunt who lives in the same street as Scout and Jem. Scout and Jem live with their widowed father, Atticus, who runs a law office in town. They are looked after by their Afro-American cook, Calpurnia, when their father is not at home.

As a narrative, To Kill a Mockingbird may be divided into three segments. For much of the novel, Scout relates the world of children’s games that she and Jem and Dill play. Adults intrude but only as a backdrop. Atticus provides a role much like a Greek chorus explaining to his children concepts and experiences that prove too complex for children on their own to fully appreciate. Calpurnia provides an ersatz mother figure. However, Calpurnia’s role in the novel is very important as, in terms of values displayed, she becomes an Afro-American mirror image to Atticus. It is Atticus who, more obviously to the casual reader, is the novel’s model of courage and integrity. Calpurnia, however, in her quiet way, is not far behind.

The apparently intellectually disabled adult, next door, that the children have never seen, Boo Radley, exercises their curiosity and their imagination and becomes a focus of their games but never emerges from the shadows and the mystery of his house.

Other adults scold or are kind or challenge the children but never change what is essentially a picture of a child’s world.    

Gradually, the world of children’s games is impacted upon by events taking place in the world of adults. Atticus, whose first case ended in executions, had no liking for the criminal law and had generally steered well clear of having to practise in that field. However, a dock brief for a young Afro-American man accused of rape, Tom Robinson, drags Atticus back to criminal law. The fact that Atticus treats his assigned duty seriously and intends to carry it out with vigour leads to Scout’s school friends telling her that her father is a “nigger lover”. Characteristically, Atticus reacts calmly, comparing the epithet to “snot nose”: words that are more indicative of how the user feels than carrying any real meaning. He does not deny the term’s applicability to him, however, hoping that he loves all people.

The high drama of an attempted lynching and the brilliant telling of the narrative of a small town criminal trial provide the climax of this second segment of the novel.

The novel then seems to be winding down. The high emotions of the trial and its aftermath gradually fade. As Jem heads into adolescence, the close relationship between tomboy kid sister and the hero brother is no longer so important. Even Scout, herself, is forced to acknowledge the implications for her of her gender and her approaching adolescence.

There is, however, much more to come. Suddenly, more high drama (itself alluded to on the opening page of the novel) brings together the opening two segments of the novel. The implications of Atticus’ principled conduct of the trial collide with characters and events of the childhood world. Scout and Jem’s status as mere children is indeed brought to an end but through challenges that they could and did not foresee.

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the great books. It discusses the big themes of racism, tolerance, idealism, and the importance of doing the right thing whether or not it is the popular thing. It discusses these great themes in the context of small town life. Its strength derives, in part, from the use of a young girl as narrator. While Atticus espouses high minded philosophy, his statements are generally made in the domestic context in answer to questions from his two children. And each statement is treated by those who hear it with the scepticism and limited understanding of a child. As are the children in the novel, the reader is brought slowly to an appreciation of the values espoused by Atticus. Like the children, the reader appreciates Atticus’ values by seeing Atticus live and breathe his own principles in the most difficult of circumstances. Harper Lee’s vision is executed with technique that is both subtle and breathtakingly poetic.

For lawyers, Atticus Finch is the embodiment of the idealism that drew us to this profession. Not only does he conduct with great skill the trial of his unpopular client, he displays understanding even of those who would do him great wrong. Of a member of a lynch mob that would have killed his client and would have killed him, if necessary, Atticus, calmly, says after the event: “He (Mr. Cunningham) might have hurt me a little … but, son, you’ll understand folks a little better when you’re older. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know – doesn’t say much for them, does it”. Even the criticism in the tail relates more to actions than the people who carry out those actions.

When asked why he was taking the unpopular brief, Atticus says: “The main thing is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold my head up in town … I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.” Of the difficulty of the task, he says: “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”    

The title of the novel also comes from Atticus. In giving his children air rifles, he instructs them: “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard but I know you will go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays if you can hit them but remember it’s a sin to kill to kill a mockingbird.”

The children’s favourite neighbour Miss Maudie explains Atticus’ Delphic advice: “Mocking irds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

There is more than one mockingbird in the novel. Not all of them are spared.

Unlike Atticus, most of us are unable to content ourselves in life merely by shooting at tin cans in the back yard. We should, however, remember the advice of Atticus Finch. Forty-nine years after the publication of Harper Lee’s great novel and nearly four decades after the events it depicts, it is still a sin to kill a mockingbird.   

Stephen Keim SC

Footnotes

1. Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama. She was born in 1926. To Kill a Mockingbird remains her only novel. It was published in 1960 when she was 36. Her father, who was a small town lawyer is thought to be the inspiration for Atticus Finch. The character Dill is thought to be based on Lee’s childhood friend, Truman Capote. Lee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for the novel. See http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/harperle.htm
2. Harper Collins is the book publishing division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Harper and Row, an American publisher with origins going back to 1819 was acquired by News in 1987. William Collins, Sons and Co., a publisher with Scots origins also going back to 1819 was acquired in 1990. Harper Collins was the name given to the merged book publisher by News Corporation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarperCollins and links within the text.