“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
This is a story about life told from the point of view of a 6-year old girl, Jean Louise Finch (or nicknamed Scout). It begins as a charming book filled with child-like innocence and wonder, which later turned awfully dark.
The story is set between 1933 and 1935 during the height of the Great Depression, in a fictitious town in Alabama called Maycomb. It evolves around the occurrences in school; at home with her dad Atticus and brother Jem; and in afterschool activities that involve all sorts of mayhem like a weird old man “Boo Radley” and his creepy house, and a magic tree that gives her and her brother food, among others.
Scout’s mother died when she was very young and so she and her brother Jem were raised by their strict but loving housekeeper Calpurnia, who is crucially for the story, a Black woman. Her role as the mother figure in the family is what makes the family immune to racism, and one of the reasons why Scout’s father Atticus steps up to become the defense lawyer for a Black man by the name of Tom Robinson, who is unjustly accused of raping a white woman Mayella Ewell.
Tom is a kind person who often passes the Ewell house on his way to work, who out of pure kindness would occassionally steps inside the fence to help Mayella with her chores (and refuse payment). But one day Mayella made romantic advances towards Tom, and when her father Bob caught them, her father beats Mayella. Mind you, this is 1930s America where racial segregation was still very much in place. And to cover up the fact that Bob beats his own daughter and to protect themselves from the racial taboos, Bob and Mayella Ewell decide to put the blame on Tom, and even accuse him of rape.
The progression of the story goes on to show the brutal racial superiority conducted by white men over the minorities. And Atticus and his family – as the defender of Tom – eventually also have to bear the brunt of it; which is extra confusing and scary when we look at it from a 6-year-old’s perspective, who witnesses her neighbours (that she had known for a long time) turn on her family with such an intense hatred. She even get bullied at school because of this.
Indeed, the book led us into the empathatic shoes of the victims, which left a bitter taste in the reader’s mind; an important eye-opener especially when the book was first published in 1960.
A bitter taste, like the mob of the town people who march to the jail and want to directly kill Tom themselves, before Scout bravely prevent them. Or the outcome of the trial where the all-white jury still sentence Tom to prison despite the clear and undeniable physical evidence of his innocence. Or when Tom completely lost his faith in the white man’s justice system (while Atticus is still actively planning to appeal the verdict to a higher court) and decides to escape from prison, before getting shot 17 times and died on impact.
It is shocking that they can kill an innocent and vulnerable man so easily like that, as if they’re killing a mockingbird.
This is what the title of the book means. It is explained in chapter 10 when Atticus tells his children that it is practically a sin to kill a mockingbird, which their neighbour miss Maudie later explains that mockingbirds don’t eat up people’s gardens or nest in corncribs, and instead they just “sing their hearts out for us.” And thus, a mockingbird is a perfect representative of the pure presence in the world, the kind, and the innocent.
The killing of a mockingbird in this story, therefore, applies to the death of a kind and innocent man Tom Robinson; the lost of child-like innocence of Scout and Jem throughout this debacle; and even the innocent Boo Radley, whom people in the town judged as a weird old guy who lives in a creepy house, but later turns out to be a very shy and kind man who saves Scout’s and Jem’s life, when Bob Ewell wants to settle a score with Atticus after he humiliated Bob in court, by attempting to kill his children.
It is such a total masterclass of a story, one that surely leaves a mark on readers’ minds. No wonder it is an American classic.
THE CHAOS THEORY 