‘Tis a sin to Kill a Mockingbird (To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee)

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Product:	To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Date:	11/10/01 (296 review reads)
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There are some strange books. Strange, not in the weird sense of the word – but strange, as in strangely fascinating. Books that make you want to be there; hovering in the background, watching. Perhaps that’s what you do when you read anyway though, if you can imagine the story well enough. But there’s some which are worse than that – they drag you in, and make you involved. Books written in the first person do that the best, which is perhaps why To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is such a fascinating story.

The thing is, there’s a problem. I read in accents. I can’t help it – I don’t know if it’s just me, obviously, because if I did know it would mean I had some super brain reading powers, and that would be scary in itself. I wish I didn’t read in accents, because right now I want to speak in a different accent to mine – all because of that one book. I want to go around saying ‘Aw, Jem’ and ‘Atticus, sir’, and perhaps more than that – and really, it’s very annoying. I could have got the accent all wrong, but you’d never know. It’s how I imagine the people of Maycomb County to speak, the people of Finch Landing, and Maycomb itself. Maycomb is where the family of Atticus Finch live. Maycomb’s some twenty miles east of Finch’s landing – Finch’s landing being the homestead of the Finch family, the place founded by Simon Finch, an ancestor – who travelled from Cornwall as a Methodist, to Philadelphia, to Jamaica, to Mobile, to Saint Stephens. Then, forty miles away, along the banks of the River Alabama, he built Finch’s landing. Years and years later (in the twentieth century… heehee), Atticus Finch broke the tradition of living at Finch’s landing and left to study law at Montgomery and then returned to Maycomb County – to Maycomb itself.

And there’s only one way to describe Ma
ycomb: “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a Summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks in the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.” Perhaps I’m wrong – but I think that’s a great description, which I love, and there’s lots to be found in the book.

The story follows through the eyes of Jean-Louise Finch (nicknamed Scout), a seven year old girl growing up in Maycomb, along with her Father, Atticus, her older brother Jem, their cook, Calpurnia, and various neighbours and other relatives. It shows her life over some years – in two parts. The book’s in two parts, and it’s based on mainly two things, but somehow they join in the end in a wonderful way.

The first, is the game of trying to make Boo Radley come out of his house – a game played by Jem and Scout, and their friend (who is also engaged to Scout :)) Charles Baker Harris, otherwise known as Dill, a boy from Meridian, Mississippi, who comes to stay in Maycomb with his Aunt Rachel every summer – his Aunt Rachel being a neighbour of the Finch’s.
Boo Radley was Arthur Radley, the youngest Radley son, the son of a family who lived in the same road as the Finch’s. Boo Radley was fascinating. People knew about him, but Jem and Scout (more so Scout, as the story’s told by her, so you never really get Jem’s point of view – just what Scout thinks Jem’s point of view was), didn’t. Boo Radley never came out of his house. He hadn’t for years and ye
ars, since before Scout was born, and she hadn’t ever seen him. Everyone was scared of the Radley place – everyone. Boo Radley had got into trouble after forming a gang (though not really a gang) with some of the Cunninghams (another of the families in Maycomb). One night, they drove around the Maycomb square – were arrested, and locked up in a cell. They were trailed, and sent to the state industrial school. Mr. Radley though it was a disgrace (“It was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr. Radley thought it was”). Arthur was released and never seen again for a whole fifteen years.

Each morning on walks to school, Jem and Scout found things in a hole in a tree – gifts that bemused them – chewing gum, little dolls, coins. They didn’t understand, but they kept them, as they never did find who’s it was. It might have continued, but Mr. Nathan Radley cemented the hole up, giving the reader the impression that it was Boo.

They came close to seeing Boo on a few occasions: one where they went so far as to enter the Radley’s land, but nearly got shot. Jem lost his trousers on the way in, and found them, laying neatly on the fence, folded and sewed by someone, who perhaps had watched them, day in, day out, playing at the Radley’s, a game they had made, making scenes of the Radley’s life into a play. The other, was when a close neighbour and friend’s house caught fire. In the early morning, when everyone had returned to their houses (being the time it was, the houses were wooden, and everyone had to leave, in case their houses would set fire, too), Scout and Jem realised they had been covered by a blanket. They didn’t know how it got their – they had been cold, and someone had covered them up – obviously Boo.

The next part of the story delves deeper. Atticus Finch was a lawyer, and was given the task of defending Tom Robinson, a crippled black man in co
urt from Bob and Mayella Ewell’s accusations of rape. Jem and Scout have to carry it on their shoulders – and by doing so, they realise a lot. A lot about ‘folks’, which is, really, what I think the book is based around. How people react, how one person will follow the other – how people can be unfair. They don’t understand, Jem especially, how people can be prejudiced and unfair – how a jury can give a man a sentence, not based on any of the evidence given in Court, but on the colour of his skin.

Most of the time, this is the theme of the story – folks. How Scout doesn’t believe her Father can do much, him being so old, until a mad dog arrives in the area, and with one shot knocks him dead. How he isn’t proud of this ability, Scout doesn’t understand until later. The book makes you think. It makes you think of Old Mrs. Dubose’s ways – and the way that the Ewell’s hold a grudge. The way that people don’t change – after generation after generation – and the way that they’ll do anything to keep the tiny little bit of dignity they had. It gives you the views of stepping into someone else’s shoes – something that Atticus Finch tells Scout to do regularly. She doesn’t do it much, and doesn’t understand why she should – until towards the very end of the book:

“Atticus was right. One time he said you never know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough”. And you know what? I love that passage, so much.

There’s lots, and it’s fascinating – I suppose it’s always been a fascinating book and it always will. It delves deep, deep down into other people’s environments – sometimes getting into their minds, too. Take the time when Atticus is away, for example, and Scout and Jem go with their cook, Calpurnia, to
her church, a church for black people:

“ ‘That’s why you don’t talk like the rest of ‘em,’ said Jem.
‘The rest of who?’
‘Rest of the coloured folks. Cal, but you talked like they did in church…’
That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having command of two languages.
‘Cal’, I asked, ‘why do you talk nigger-take to the – to your folks when you know it’s not right?’
‘Well in the first place I’m black’
‘That doesn’t mean you hafta talk that way when you know better,’, said Jem.
Calpurnia tilted her hat and scratched her head, then pressed her head down carefully over her ears. ‘It’s right hard to say,’ she said. ‘Suppose you and Scout talked coloured-folks’ talk at home – it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white folks’ talk at church, and with my neighbours? They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses.’”

Overall, the book’s excellent. All the beginning, the middle and the end – wonderful. Somehow, I like it best, because of the way the beginning starts off and the end finishes in the same place, because of how it is set – Scout looking back. You know, I like it too – as I said, because of the way it makes you want to be there, like when Scout finally meets Boo, and says in such a cool, calm, collected way “Hey, Boo”, like she had known him all her life. The book makes you want to be there to take in the descriptions of people, to take in the way Scout thinks, the way Scout’s always unsure, and the way she watches the World – her little World in Maycomb, grow, and evolve and change. But also in some places, I love t
he book because of how it makes you glad that you’re not there – because the writing’s so good, it chops and changes your feelings all the time and it never ceases to amaze how someone, Harper Lee, can write that well.

Y’know, I always smile at the end. It makes you feel very contented having read it. So, if you haven’t; I reckon you ought to go do so.

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