Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's
To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's
To Kill a Mockingbird

New Essays

Edited by Michael J. Meyer

the scarecrow press, Inc.

Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

2010

Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Copyright © 2010 by Michael J. Meyer

All rights reserved
. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harper Lee's To kill a mockingbird : new essays / edited by Michael J. Meyer.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8108-7722-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7723-8 (ebook)

1. Lee, Harper. To kill a mockingbird. I. Meyer, Michael J., 1943–

PS3562.E353T63375 2010

813'.54—dc22 2010020634

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For the cast members of
Raisin in the Sun
produced at Walther High School, Melrose Park, Illinois, in 1977—Sean, Donald, Carlotta, Cheryl, Paul, Greg, Claudette, and Jeff. You helped me realize how important black equality is and how much untapped talent was beneath the surface of your personalities. There was so much injustice then, and producing a play with an all-black cast was a risk in a school with a majority of whites, but we broke barriers that will never be put back up. Thank you for sharing your talents with me. I share this book with you now as a symbol of how far we've come and with a recognition of how far we have yet to go.

Maggie Seligman

I first encountered Harper Lee's
To Kill a Mockingbird
in 1962, as a student at the New Lincoln School in New York City, previously a lab school at Columbia University and one founded on what Jem calls the “Dewey Decimal System” (
TKAM
18). Unlike Miss Caroline, who tries to enforce on the white first graders of Maycomb an awkward and misguided interpretation of John Dewey's ideas regarding democracy and education, New Lincoln embodied the democratic and diverse demographic and pedagogical approaches that Dewey advocated. Indeed, I always felt sorry for Miss Caroline, since her own preconceived notions and prejudices interfered with her ability to integrate Dewey's ideas about progressive education into her classroom, and the all-white population she taught—while economically diverse—did not truly represent what Dewey had in mind. The teary tyro teacher, whose first day of school is no better for her than it is for her outspoken, academically talented student Scout, offers a touching irony and serves to introduce us early in the novel to the perils and intransigence of early socialization and education, a point which the novel investigates by relating the experiences of the citizens of Maycomb in the context of a trial that shakes the foundations upon which their society and culture are built. Indeed, as the characters discover, it is difficult to uproot a tree whose roots run deep, and while one can perhaps loosen its grip in the soil or hack off a few branches, it will take more than the martyrdom of one man, Tom Robinson, to cut the taproot.

My first reading of
To Kill a Mockingbird
in a classroom that was balanced by gender and populated by an array of children from a variety of racial, ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds made for interesting discussions. But what stands out for me as that young reader was the moment when I read Bob Ewell's accusation of Tom Robinson: “I seen that black nigger yonder ruttin' on my Mayella!” (
TKAM
196). How could I not be shocked by Ewell's language and its inherent hatred and violence? Indeed, that accusation plunges any reader right into that crowded, sweltering courtroom. And for good reason, as parsing out Ewell's accusation reveals that his words embody many of the thematic concerns addressed in Lee's novel as well as the critical attention the text has received. In fact, Bob Ewell's declaration may have been responsible in large part for the widespread censorship of the novel, often on the basis of racial prejudice but also for its use of “questionable” or “immoral” language.

Ewell perjures himself immediately because he admits to seeing the act of rape in progress. He calls Tom a “black nigger,” using a racial epithet reflective of the attitudes of many Maycomb citizens who represent a wide range of age and economic status. More significantly, Ewell uses the word “black” as a way to underscore Tom's skin color and, in so doing, emphasizes the converse, the color of the white community of Maycomb and the white jurors who will decide the case. In fact, given Ewell's economic and educational deprivations, whiteness is all he has, the only quality that raises him above the level of the African Americans in his community and elsewhere in his cultural geography. Therefore, Bob Ewell's accusation underscores the problems of racism that the novel addresses in complex and kaleidoscopic ways.

Next, Ewell uses the word “ruttin'”—a word that, by definition, describes the mating of animals. This word dehumanizes Tom. In fact, by using the words he does to describe the ravishment of his daughter Mayella, Ewell channels Iago's words to Desdemona's father, Brabantio, when Iago informs him that Desdemona is eloping with the Moor, Othello, also a man of color: “I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs” (
Othello
, I.i.115–116). Iago's intent is to destroy Othello, just as Ewell's intention is to destroy Tom Robinson. But surely this destruction becomes an easier task psychologically speaking when the alleged perpetrator is no longer considered a human being in the mind of the antagonist and is, instead, transformed into an animal. Even more interesting, by comparing Tom to an animal, Ewell seems to reveal that he views Mayella as somewhat of a beast herself for attempting to seduce Tom. As Iago tells Brabantio, “You'll have coursers for cousins, and gennets for germans,” (
Othello
, I.i.112–113), as if the offspring of a white woman and a man of color could be nothing but inhuman. Quite ironically, in his testimony, Tom Robinson states that Mayella told him “‘what her papa do to her don't count'” (
TKAM
221), implying that Ewell himself is engaging in unnatural acts with Mayella—and the genetic consequences for the offspring of incest are well-known.

Moreover, by describing Tom—and Mayella—in animalistic terms, Ewell highlights the fact that throughout
Mockingbird
, characters that Maycomb society deems “the other” are dehumanized, ostracized, or isolated. These characters include Arthur Radley, who becomes a ghost with a ghostly name, not a human one; Tom and Helen Robinson, Calpurnia, and the African Americans citizens of Maycomb County in general; the Mrunas in Africa, whom the missionary ladies want to save, lifting their poor benighted souls by enlightening them with Christianity; the Ewells themselves, Mayella Ewell in particular; and finally, the tomboy Scout. “Otherness” is also an issue for the Radley family, who sever themselves from the quotidian social world of Maycomb; for Mrs. Dubose, a relic of another age, symbolized by the pistol she allegedly keeps hidden in her lap in case she needs to shoot at Yankees or anyone else attempting to pillage the Southern way of life; for Miss Maudie, whose magnificent garden subjects her to threats and warnings from the fundamentalist “religious right” of Maycomb County and whose protection of her flowers leads to a fire that destroys her entire house and possessions, a loss she rises from like a phoenix, connecting her with the bird imagery in the novel; to Dolphus Raymond, who, as Scout observes, “deliberately perpetrated fraud against himself” (
TKAM
228), because he chooses to engage in culturally forbidden love; and to Dill, “who preferred his own twilight world” (163), using his imagination to cushion himself from the emotional pain of feeling unloved and unwanted. Indeed, a large number of the characters in
Mockingbird
are nonconformists who live by their own lights, to the extent that they can do so, surviving within the microcosm of Maycomb and the macrocosm of the South in the 1930s, a region just sixty-eight years removed from secession from the Union and from the resentment and resistance to Reconstruction that followed the Civil War.

The words of Bob Ewell's accusation also spotlight the violence that permeates the novel and the way in which all the violence in
To Kill a Mockingbird
is perpetrated by men. First there is the home imprisonment of Arthur Radley. He is not chained to the bed, as Jem imagines, but, as Atticus explains, “There are other ways of making people into ghosts” (
TKAM
12), namely, to destroy them psychologically, a form of murder perpetrated upon Boo by his father. (It seems worthy of note that like Bob Ewell, Mr. Radley abuses his own child.) The ensuing acts of violence, both real and threatened—among them, the alleged rape, Mayella's beating, Burris Ewell's threats to Miss Caroline, Tom's murder, the scene at the jail with the Cunningham lynch mob, the “chunking” and ugly language aimed at Helen Robinson as she walks to and from work, the threats to Atticus, the cut screen at Judge Taylor's house—all culminate in the attack on Jem and Scout by Bob Ewell and Ewell's murder at the hands of Boo Radley on Halloween night. Indeed, only when Boo is “spared” the consequences of the murder of Bob Ewell is the chain of violence broken.

Victimization because of race or gender, another theme that is central to the novel, is also inherent to Bob Ewell's words. When Scout observes that she feels the “starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on [her]” (
TKAM
155), she is recognizing the limitations of a patriarchal, paternalistic society that, in the Southern world of Maycomb County, is, ironically, perpetrated by its matriarchs—Aunt Alexandra being the most leviathan of these figures. The paternalism that dictates how Scout and other Maycomb ladies must behave is, by extension, the same sort of paternalism that rationalized the “peculiar institution” of slavery. At their core, therefore, Ewell's words clarify for readers that in the world of Maycomb County and places like it, women and those placed in socially inferior positions, such as people of color, Jews, Catholics, or the socially or economically disadvantaged, are vulnerable to becoming victimized or marginalized. As a side note, it is interesting that Mayella, both disadvantaged and marginalized, is, unlike Scout, willing to breach the social and gender codes that confine her, though with disastrous results. Clearly, Harper Lee invites readers to consider gender roles, gender codes, and sexism as well as social roles, social and religious codes, and racism.

Harper Lee wrote her novel shortly after some of the early skirmishes in the civil rights movement, in essence the Civil War of the twentieth century, and when Bob Ewell refers to his daughter as “
my
[emphasis mine] Mayella” (
TKAM
196) in his raw description of her alleged rape by Tom Robinson, Ewell seems to be speaking of himself and, by extension, any whites who felt that their way of life and economic status were in danger of being usurped or plundered by African Americans and other people of color. Such an interpretation not only allows readers a retrospective glance at the Fugitive Slave Law, Dred Scott decision, states rights, secession, and the Civil War but also highlights the ways in which diversity or changes in the social order that might threaten the status quo are central concerns of Lee's novel.

One thing that remains somewhat of a puzzle is why Bob Ewell brought what was a private and, to him, humiliating matter into the public eye. Why didn't he attempt to save what he had of his reputation and protect himself and his daughter from public embarrassment and scrutiny? Surely Tom Robinson was not going to speak of what happened, given the social codes of the time, and Mayella's beating at the hands of her irate father would go a long way toward keeping her from doing such a thing again. It appears that what Bob Ewell hopes to gain is what all American citizens hope for—equality. The courts are “the great levelers” (
TKAM
233), as Atticus reminds the jury in aid of Tom Robinson's defense. But if this is true for Tom, it is true for Bob and Mayella Ewell as well, no matter how despicable readers may find them. In contemporary times, ones that are in some ways not so different from the 1930s, American citizens continue to suffer from racism, economic deprivation and the stigmas that accompany it, sexism, and prejudice or marginalization on the basis of disability, religion, or sexual orientation. Consequently, these times seem ripe for a reevaluation of
To Kill a Mockingbird
. Indeed, this present volume, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the novel, offers its readers an opportunity to discover new ways of seeing its themes, imagery, characters, controversies, and structure, while also providing ideas for its use in the classroom.

Issues of pedagogy and pedagogical approaches to the text are addressed by Christian Z. Goering and Cindy M. Williams, who offer a fresh and contemporary way to make the novel more accessible and relevant to today's middle and high school readers and writers. In the Soundtrack of the Novel assignment that they have devised, readers establish connections to the text by associating aspects of it with songs, describing and explaining the connections they perceive and collecting the songs. In contrast to focusing on the learner, James B. Kelley employs grounded theory to determine three main patterns or unifying concepts that reveal the ways in which teachers are talking to their students about the novel. His findings suggest that teachers do a fine job with text-based approaches but need to do a far better job with teaching critical literacy and the theories that can take readers beyond initial, predetermined readings of the text.

Racism and the novel are examined in this present collection by Angela Shaw-Thornburg, who considers the ways in which African Americans might feel marginalized by the text and concludes that it can nevertheless be taught today as a way to open up discussions of white identity and social stereotyping in the South and in the country as a whole, a new perspective indeed. Katie Rose Guest Pryal argues forcefully that there is a failure of cross-cultural racial empathy in the novel and suggests that whites cannot truly empathize with blacks because of “fear of revelation”—that is, a fear of what it will show them about themselves.

The novel's portrayal of the legal system and analysis of Atticus through the lens of the law form the basis for another series of discussions. Jeffrey B. Wood proposes that the real protagonist in the novel is the law and that “bending the law” for the sake of a higher purpose is a necessary and moral act. Ann Engar provides a detailed examination of the ways in which Atticus has been a model of what a lawyer should be and how his character has influenced the legal profession and shaped some individuals' choice to become lawyers. Malcolm Gladwell takes an opposing view regarding Atticus' courtroom performance and legal judgment, finding him not to be a reformer but someone who perpetuates the status quo. Gladwell also compares Atticus to “Big Jim” Folsom, the governor of Alabama during the time Harper Lee was writing the novel.

The presence of “the other” in the novel is examined herein, most notably by Hugh McElaney, whose study suggests that the novel addresses differences as forms of disability and that in Maycomb, fear of exposure to these differences leads to the creation of boundaries that are not to be transgressed. Careful investigation of related issues, such as the stigmas arising from disabilities and the connections among eugenics, racism, and social groups, enhances this comprehensive discussion. A performance analysis of the novel is offered by Lisa Detweiler Miller, who argues that Boo Radley and Tom Robinson, as representatives of the medical and minority models of disability, should be read not for their metaphorical significance as disabled bodies but as figures that move the narrative of social progress forward by inviting performances that subvert cultural norms.