To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
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HarperPerennial (New York): 1961. Trade paperback: 336 pages. ISBN-10: 0-06-093546-4 Suggested retail price: $12.95 (US) Award: 1961 Pulitzer Prize Tags: Alabama; Mainstream; racism; trials Tactical strength: [9/10] |
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My son had to read To Kill a Mockingbird for his high school English class, and I generally like to read the same books so I can help him study. Somehow through all of high school and all my college English literature courses, I never had to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I always hesitate before writing a review of an award-winning book. Clearly, the Pulitzer committee thought enough of Harper Lee's book to give it top honors in 1961, but I think some of the social issues from the 1960s that pushed Mockingbird to the top of the list don't have as much relevance today. I think Lee does an excellent job at evoking the feeling of 1930s life in a small Alabama town, although I find some of her scenes exist only to expand the quaintness of the town and not to move the plot forward.
Lee establishes early on that the Finch family doesn't fit the mold for a typical southern family. Scout can read before she starts school, and she and her brother Jeremy ("Jem") don't seem to have any racial biases. I think Lee uses these differences as a reflection point. If her characters had the same traits and habits as the people around them, then Scout couldn't comment on or even notice the characteristics of her neighbors. In spite of these differences, the children seem to fit in easily enough until their father, Atticus, agrees to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. The trial essentially divides the town, and the Finch children take a lot of teasing for their father. The trial causes Scout to have to evaluate or develop her own position on race as well as make some judgments about what characteristics constitute good moral behavior.
To Kill a Mockingbird goes to great lengths to point out that one could categorize human beings into many different classes. On the surface level, one could easily make a division between white and Negro people, but Lee shows examples that counter any stereotypes. We read about kind and caring individuals of both skin colors, as well as mean and low individuals of both skin colors -- although the lowest individuals turn out to have white skin. Lee makes the argument that race doesn't matter as much as moral character. Calpurnia, the Finch's Negro housekeeper, demonstrates high moral character, and Atticus entrusts her to raise his children in the absence of their late mother. Bob Ewell, the white father of the rape victim, demonstrates very low moral character. He abuses his children and refuses to work for a living, yet he persists in a belief that he and any white person outrank a Negro person. Atticus advises Scout that "you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (33). In defending a Negro, Atticus demonstrates this moral position, although it occasionally leads him to expect better behavior from people and puts him and his family in danger. Scout comes to agree with her father by the end of the novel, which emphasizes the importance of early moral education that Atticus values above the general education taught at the schools.
I find To Kill a Mockingbird works at many levels. You can read just the story of Scout and the trial as a suspense story, but you can also dig deep into the thematic and moral issues. As Nathanial Hawthorne said, "Easy reading is damned hard writing," and To Kill a Mockingbird reads quite easily, but you can also see the enormous amount of work involved in making the easy-reading story work under just about any level of literary investigation.
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