The Continuing Legacy of TKAM

 

Some months ago, my dear friend, poet and author Mary Langer Thompson, sent me a copy of the book pictured above, Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters. I am deeply indebted, as reading Tom Santopietro’s fascinating review of the writing of the novel and the making of the film reminded me once again how much I love this book.

 

Ten years old and starved for books that were slightly more advanced than the Bobbsey Twins and Little House on the Prairie series my friend Cathy had offered, I snuck into the closet where some of my older brother’s books were stored, hoping to find a science fiction or fantasy novel I could get lost in. Instead, I pulled out a tattered paperback with the picture of a bird on the cover. To Kill a Mockingbird. I was a birdwatcher. Why on earth would anyone want to kill a mockingbird?

In Harper Lee’s words, “Thus began our longest journey together.”

Reading it then, at age ten, I didn’t fully understand all the nuances of race relations. I was a young white girl living in a predominantly white community in Southern California. That particular summer was a quiet, lazy one. The fiery tumult of the Watts uprising was still a year away.

What did resonate with me the first time I read TKAM—and every time since—was the story of a girl who was as like me as she was unlike me.

Like me, Scout was a tomboy. (With my first read, I was ever-so-envious of Scout’s overalls; It would be another ten years before I finally had the buying power to purchase my first pair at age twenty. I’m nearly seventy now, and I still wear them often.)

Unlike me, Scout had a comfortable and close relationship with her father (something else I was envious of).

But what a story! Bored of a summer, Scout, Jem, and Dill spent their days imagining life inside the Radley home, in the same way my brother, sister, and I would wonder and speculate about the weird neighbors who’d moved in next door, bringing with them a live monkey that roamed freely about the house and regularly attacked and bit the girl our age who lived there.

In my initial read, the trial of Tom Robinson seemed to interrupt the flow of the book, and I didn’t understand most of it, or the chapters about the well-intentioned but clearly racist (although not to me at the time) missionary society or Scout’s very racist third-grade teacher. Happily, the novel returned to the mysterious figure of Boo Radley in its final pages.

At some point in my childhood or adolescence, I saw the movie based on the book. I have no memory of how I saw it for the first time; it must have been shown on television. But my emotional memory recalls the tenderness that Atticus extended to his young daughter.

Some years later, when my own daughter turned ten, I gave her a copy of TKAM for her birthday. It occurred to me then—since my kid would be reading it—that I should read it again, review it from an adult perspective. My, how differently—how much more heavily—the story landed on my heart. Now that I had more fully experienced the Civil Rights Movement. Now that I had been caught up in race riots at my high school. Now that I had Black friends. Now that I had children of my own, some of them racially mixed.

If I had loved the novel before, I revered it now.

So I count myself most fortunate and blessed that, nearly as soon as I began teaching high school, I was privileged to teach To Kill a Mockingbird as part of the curriculum. I taught ninth grade for 25 of the 27 years of my teaching career, with multiple sections of ninth grade in any given year. How many times now have I read aloud these words, affecting a Southern accent, “Folks call me Dill” or “Scout, let’s get us a baby” or “Hey, Boo”? I have no idea. How many times have I watched my students as they watched the big reveal of Boo Radley in the movie? I have no idea of that number, either. But I can tell you that, despite having read and seen it over a hundred times now, that scene—whether in the book or in the film—still brings me to tears.

In recent years, TKAM has had its detractors. In my humble opinion, the critics who focus solely on the plot thread of Tom Robinson miss the mark of Harper Lee’s great American novel. As much as we may agonize over the stark truth of his situation, the book is not “about” Tom. It’s Scout’s story, one hundred percent. It’s a coming-of-age tale—albeit based on the harsh realities of Southern issues—of a young girl who is, initially, blissfully ignorant of the ignorance in her community. She is six and innocent as the story begins, nine when it closes, her eyes now having been opened to see some of those things that Atticus would have kept her from seeing, if only he could have.

Sixty years on—even after all those years of reading it over and over again to sweet but squirrely freshmen, even after my lofty graduate classes in Faulkner and O’Neill and the many women writers like Toni Morrison who have brilliantly shifted the landscape in modern literature—TKAM is still my favorite book. In nine years and four months, my great-granddaughter will turn ten. I know exactly what gift I will give her for that birthday.

What Scout said

"Well, Dill, after all he's just a negro." –Scout Finch

During the trial of Tom Robinson, a Black man falsely accused of raping the White woman who tried to take advantage of him in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout's best friend Dill begins to cry uncontrollably. As he struggles to collect himself outside, he tries to explain to Scout that what upset him was the treatment of Tom Robinson by the prosecuting attorney who was "talking so hateful to him" during his cross examination.

"The way that man called him 'boy' all the time and sneered at him," Dill tells her, prompting Scout's short retort above.

"He's just a negro."

I read this novel with my students in twenty-five of the twenty-seven years I taught high school. When we reached this point, which is roughly three-quarters of the way through the book, I'd have them write to this prompt: Is Scout a racist?

Year after year, from 1990 to 2017, I asked the same question. Of course, they were required to explain to me why they believed what they concluded about her. Among individual students, the answers would vary.

"Yes!"
"No!"
"IDK." (Translation: I Don't Know.)
"She can't be racist because she's black." (Some students assumed that because Jem, Scout and Dill spoke with Southern accents, they were Black.)
"She's racist because she lives in the South and all White people in the South were racists back then."
"She's not racist because racists hate Black people and she doesn't hate Black people."

True, Scout does not hate Black people.

But yes, she is a racist.

This scene, this conversation between Scout and Dill, this is the crux of the matter. Tom Robinson is fighting for his very life before their eyes, and Scout attempts to comfort her friend by suggesting he not get too upset since this man is "just a negro."

To Scout, his life matters less than hers because he is Black.

Yes, she is a child, and yes, this is a novel and she's the protagonist, so by the time Scout has had time to process the trial and listen to further discussion by her father and brother, she is already drawing new conclusions about her racist third grade teacher, and by the end of the novel she has come to fully understand why it is "a sin to kill a mockingbird."

But before that... Scout is a product of her family, her history and her community and yes, she is a racist.

If folks grow up seeing and hearing a distinction made between races--between who gets the highest regard, the best jobs, the most convenient seat on the bus--and they emulate that behavior, they are tacitly complicit in the preservation of this learned behavior we call racism.

Time and again in my life, I have had racists tell me, "I don't hate Black people...." And it's very possible that they don't associate what they feel with hatred. But if they hold themselves in higher regard because they are not Black, they are racists.

Because Black lives matter as much as any lives.

This idea that others are less valuable because of their race or ethnicity or geographic origin or socio-economic level is, well, in Dill's words, "It ain't right.... Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that--it just makes me sick."

The events in Virgina over the past two days have made me sick indeed, and I know that many of my friends feel the same way. We are sickened by the rage and hate and violence, but we are also sickened by the disparity we continue to experience, even among those who say, "I don't hate anyone." Racism isn't always this blatant. Most often, it is subtle and insidious, which is why it is still so pervasive.

Homage to Miss Lee: Maudie Atkinson

Miss Maudie (Rosemary Murphy) and Jem Finch (Phillip Alford) in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird

(The subject of this post is Maudie Atkinson, a character in To Kill a Mockingbird. In the film version of the novel, her character was endearingly rendered by actress Rosemary Murphy—no relation.)

I think about Miss Maudie often, especially when I am gardening. After Scout (and Boo Radley, on some days), she is the character with whom I most identify. Maudie loves to garden, and she loves to be outside. In fact, with the exception of the ill-fated and profoundly ironic "missionary tea" in Chapter 24, Miss Maudie is outdoors every single time her character makes an appearance (well, ok, except for those brief moments during which the rabid Tim Johnson threatens everyone on the block). I like that about her. I also like her sass. When the "foot washing Baptists" shout judgmental scripture at her for being prideful about her flowers, she shouts scripture right back at them—"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!" Yep, she's my kind of gal. She also puts the hypocritical blowhard Mrs. Merriweather in her place at the missionary tea when she starts to talk crap about Atticus. Atta girl, Maudie.

Alas, love seems to have passed Maudie by, and I guess I identify with that, too, to some extent, now that I've been alone for a couple of decades. I'll tell you what, though, if a man like Atticus Finch lived across the street from me, I'd do a lot more than just befriend his children and perhaps, on occasion, bake him (or his horrible sister) a Lane cake. I'd have enough sense to step up my game—especially if my Atticus-neighbor looked anything like Gregory Peck. Those Lane cakes certainly would be packed with shinny if that were the case, and I'd find a way to deliver them when the kids weren't around.

Of course, due to her spinsterhood, Maudie misses out on raising children, though she goes a far way in helping raise Jem and Scout. She offers gentle advice without scolding or criticizing, which is always my goal with my students. Scout mentions at one point that Miss Maudie allows them to help themselves to the scuppernongs from her arbor or to get a squirt of warm milk from her cow, but you know, the truth is, Maudie doesn't have a cow. Not really. I mean, if she had a cow, wouldn't someone have mentioned the poor beast on the night of the fire? Or the morning after? Other than Scout's vague one-time reference, the cow is never mentioned again, so in my mind, she doesn't really exist.

The best thing about Maudie, of course, is that she is the spokesperson for Atticus, explaining his ways to the kids when they don't understand, encouraging them to appreciate that their father is someone quite extraordinary. It is through Maudie that we learn why "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird" (if we're referencing the novel; in the movie, this wisdom comes directly from Atticus as he speaks to Walter Cunningham at dinner). After the verdict in the Tom Robinson trial, Maudie tries to comfort Jem by telling him that some folks are simply called upon to do the unpleasant things in life that others don't want to do, and that Atticus is just such a person (though Jem's dismay is not in regard to his father's failures, but rather the town's).

I find it fascinating that people often equate Harper Lee with Boo Radley, since she declined to make public appearances (for the most part) or give interviews. But she wasn't a recluse. After Mockingbird came out to such success, she still enjoyed living in New York, and she went about the city shopping and going to baseball games unrecognized by the vast majority of the folks she encountered. (There is something to be said for the anonymity found in the writer's life. My guess is Stephen King can probably still wander around New York City in a baseball cap and shades and his fans are none the wiser).

No, Miss Lee wasn't Boo. She was Maudie. She loved to be outside, loved her town and the Southern way of life, despite its flaws. And she loved her father, the real Atticus (Amasa Coleman Lee), so it makes sense that Maudie is the character who says all the lovely things about Atticus. And she never married, nor did she have children. Lee, like Maudie, lived a quiet life, but a social one, I'm sure. She had her own view of the world, her own particular hope for its growth and enlightenment, and she put that hope forward with gentle words. She was a woman who, with her novel, created a space of comfort, wisdom and acceptance, much like Miss Maudie's porch was to Scout.

Pretty sure Harper Lee didn't have a cow, either. In fact, I'm certain of it.

In Memoriam: Harper Lee

In 1966, desperate to find a book to read, I snuck into my brother’s room when no one was home and browsed through the books in his closet. I don’t know what made me choose To Kill a Mockingbird, but I do remember that once I began, I couldn’t put it down. I was twelve years old.

Two years later, the movie starring Gregory Peck (and the inimitable Robert Duvall as Boo Radley) aired on television, and all the characters I had fallen in love with came to life in black and white. That same year, men who had become my heroes in the Civil Rights Movement mostly because of my reading of the novel—Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.—lost their lives to the socio-political war that was devastating the country at that time.

To say this novel shaped my life is an understatement. I lost my father at a young age and was raised by a non-nurturing mother. Like so many others who’ve read this book, I both envied and longed for the type of strong, loving relationship Scout shares with Atticus. And I yearned for the wisdom of Atticus in my life.

When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that always made me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked.

And I learned volumes about parenting from his example:

I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, running errands for [Jem], providing him with literature, nourishment and water, and was carrying him blankets for the night when Atticus said if I paid no attention to him, Jem would come down. Atticus was right.

This was such an important book in my life that when my own daughter turned twelve, I bought her a copy—and I ended up re-reading the novel from start to finish, falling in love with Atticus even more, now that I was a parent myself.

By the time my daughter was a teenager, I had become a teacher. In my second year of teaching high school, I was assigned freshman English. That year we read To Kill a Mockingbird together, and for twenty-five out of the twenty-seven years of my teaching career, I have read it again—mostly aloud, affecting a Southern accent, and always, always fighting back tears in certain sections:

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.”

“Hey, Boo.”

“Mr. Tate was right.”

Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”

Before he went inside the house, [Atticus] stopped in front of Boo Radley. “Thank you for my children, Arthur,” he said.

(Gregory Peck’s line in the screenplay version is, “Thank you, Arthur. Thank you for my children,” as he extends his hand to shake Boo’s. To my mind, it is one of the simplest yet most beautifully moving scenes in the film.)

He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

In my early years of teaching, I was sometimes criticized for readingewwww aloud to my students. (‘They’re in high school now. They need to learn to read and comprehend on their own.’) To my way of thinking, these folks had it all wrong. What better way to learn to comprehend the dynamics of literature than to hear the words come alive? Hearing someone who is familiar with the text stream through the long sections of dialogue in the courtroom scene has to be better than trying to parse through Tom Robinson’s style of speech (“No suh, I’s scared I’d be in court….”) while keeping track of who was speaking and what significance there was in the sometimes calm, sometimes accusatory exchange of questions and answers.

Because I read the novel along with my students, I’ve read it in excess of a hundred times. Each spring I read it with a new batch of kids, and each time I learn something new. It took me years to figure out why Harper Lee included the chapter on Mrs. Dubose—because as a writer, I know that every chapter has a purpose, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how Mrs. Dubose supported the theme of the novel. Until I realized what she stood for. And then the epiphany came like a bolt of lightning.

“You know, she was a great lady.”

Yes, Atticus, just as the pre-Civil War South was, and it, too, suffered from a disease that ravaged it.

Over the years, as I’ve taught Mockingbird, I’ve thought fondly of Harper Lee. She would have been in her sixties when I first began teaching the novel. After I’d been teaching it for several years, I wrote her a long letter, never expecting any response, just wanting her to know how meaningful the book had been to me as a child and as an adult. She never answered, but this was her way, and everyone knew it. As the years went by, I would occasionally seek out her name on the internet to see how she was faring. Every year I’ve been able to tell my students as we finish the novel, “So Harper Lee is still alive…” (because 1960, the year the book came out, seems like hundreds of years ago to them). As it turns out, we are currently reading the book in my class. Tomorrow in each class period, I will tell them that Harper Lee has died, and we will talk about the legacy she has left behind.

Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel helped solidify the Civil Rights Movement in America. Since its publication, it has never been out of print. Countless generations of readers, old and young, have found friends and role models in Jem, Scout, Dill, Atticus, Calpurnia, Miss Maudie, Tom Robinson and the rest of the characters. The novel will continue to influence readers for generations to come.

Rest in peace, Harper Lee. Thank you for your life, thank you for your work, thank you for your heart. Your words will be with us forever.

Go Set a Watchman

Atticus Finch is not a real person. He is a character in a novel. While he may be multifaceted and dynamic as a character, he is that and only that—a character, comprised of the requisite parts given him by Harper Lee when she wrote the consummate American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird and also when she wrote the first draft of that novel, which is now known as Go Set a Watchman.

For in fact, that is exactly what Go Set a Watchman is—a first draft, the initial disorganized and somewhat plotless musings of a slightly younger Harper Lee than the one who wrote Mockingbird. Miss Lee's publisher, HarperCollins, has done the business of promoting Watchman as if it were an entirely separate novel—because that is what their identity is; they are a business. As much as we would like to think of publishing houses as being run by noble, educated persons who are nearly super-heroes in their defense of great literature, the truth is, HarperCollins is a business organized for the purpose of making money. Lots and lots of money.

And so it seems they have done with Watchman. (It is currently number one in literature/classics on Amazon.) But while they touted this book as 'a new novel by Harper Lee,' those good folks know exactly what this is; it is the first pages of a novel written by a young college student who thought she might like to write about the South, her hometown, and her father. In Watchman, she characterizes Atticus as having caved to the agenda of the racists of his town. In Mockingbird, he stands against such folk. Which Atticus best reflects Amasa Coleman Lee, Harper's real-life father? Who can say, and we will never know, as our beloved Miss Lee, always reticent to give interviews, is now beyond the point of discussing either novel.

When I wrote Tainted Legacy, a book about my great-grandmother, Bertha Gifford, who is now vilified as a serial killer, I wrote the original draft to fit the current True Crime genre. After long discussions with a publisher who read that original draft, however, I decided to rewrite the book as a memoir. Now it is a book that I am quite proud of, as it reflects a wider scope of Bertha's story (which is also my grandmother's story and my mother's and mine as well). In the same way, I believe Harper Lee had similar discussions about her first go at a novel, and she came away with some ideas about how she wanted to change her portrayal of this character, Atticus Finch, and the town of Maycomb... and herself. Thus she produced the much beloved work we know today as Mockingbird. If only she'd had the presence of mind to toss that first manuscript in the incinerator... as I have done with my first attempt.