Editorial by WSJ reporter Allan Barra here.
Wow, thanks for the condescension, dude. At least the majority of the comments associated with the piece tend to dismiss his POV.
I guess I would say this: it perhaps is a children’s book, but only in the best way - most basic truths should be obvious to a child…
Another excerpt:
I really have no problem with this, really. I haven’t read the book in a long time, but Lee certainly stacks the deck in a way that makes the injustice particularly acute and the heroes and villains glaringly obvious. Yes, sometimes life is like that, but usually, there is a little more depth and complexity. But it’s not enough to make Tom Robinson a sympathetic innocent–let’s also make him a cripple! It’s not enough to make the Ewells contemptible racist white trash–let’s make them incestuous, too! It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, which is why it’s great for an early age primer on the tragic repercussions of the legacy of racism in this country, but it’s also a book that seems more and more one-dimensional the older one gets. And even though the movie is expertly and lovingly crafted and well-acted, I think the same criticism applies to it, too.
To the OP: You might want to consider the ramifications of your own statement that trashing To Kill a Mockingbird is equivalent to “kicking a puppy”. You’re essentially acceding to the merit of the trashing.
I am merely pointing out that he is taking a shot at a well-loved book, nothing more. Per **ArchiveGuy’s **post, I think there is some truth to the basic assertions in the WSJ column - TKaM does simplify the Good and Evil aspects of the setting and does appear to frame a 60’s mindset about the move towards greater racial equality. But those issues could be discussed without slamming the book or implying that people that like it are liberal-wackjob children…most classics have issues worthy of discussion…
Kicking a puppy makes me think that it’s something sort of weak to begin with. When I think of doing the literary equivalent of kicking a puppy, I think of trashing something really bad/easy to mock, like Twilight.
Okay - sounds like I got the metaphor wrong; I was going for “he was assaulting something that you’d expect to be un-assault-able and is held dear by a lot of folks.” Maybe it is more like “trashing Abe Lincoln” or “saying the Allies were bad guys in WW2” or something…
…work with me, people! 
Which would suggest the problem is that he’s kicking a sacred cow, not a puppy.
But its not a book about the complexities of good and evil (see discussion ongoing about Lolita - TKaM and Lolita are two of my favorite books). TKaM is a book about the loss of innocence. About growing up. And its prose is beautiful.
And it is accessible. It isn’t a children’s book - my daughter is ten and I won’t let her read it yet - close, but not yet. That is part of what makes TKaM one of America’s favorite books - its a book almost all people can get through. Not all American classics are like that - and a lot of classics snobs think “difficult” is a necessary component of “great.”
“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” --Don Marquis
I’m not sure I have anything to add to that.
I don’t think it’s “kicking a puppy” as much as it’s “trying to slaughter a sacred cow”.
Note I say “trying”, because I don’t think he’s successful.
Maybe Fitch is naive, maybe he’s just trying to explain something to a child – we can only assume that she received more facts as time went on, based on Fitch’s personality.
That was my impression.
I think this is correct and often gets naive people into trouble in real life. I had a temp job in a bond enforcment agency and one thing I found surprising is how nice, and charming these criminals or bad guys could be.
In real life bad people aren’t all bad and that is how they manage to continue their practices.
Bad people can be nice or even fun to hang around with. As long as everything is going their way, but lord help you if it isn’t.
Does having an arm mangled make one a “cripple”? It didn’t seem to affect his life much because he was strong and made a good living.
His mangled arm is vital to the plot, to show that he couldn’t possibly have hit or choked Mayella.
That kind of thing is very common. It’s not like it’s a big shocker, and it’s not as if the novel went into that aspect in detail. It was barely mentioned. (“She says she never kissed a grown man before an’ she might as well kiss a Negro. She says what her papa do to her don’t count.”)
I’m not going to read the article, the guy sounds like a typical WSJ jerk.
I think this somewhat misses the point.
The false accuser white trash has to be scum, the innocent black guy has to be sympathetic and obviously innocent of the crime (he couldn’t punch Mayella on the right side of the face with no left arm) for the same reason that the town has to be presented as sort of naive, as in the Klan story.
The tragedy of the town is that they are confronted with a choice - believe in an impossible accusation, or abandon their social mores, on which they have depended for generations. And they make the wrong choice. They almost have to. This is not because most of the characters are evil people, but because that is how they live.
That’s the point of an earlier episode, where the new school teacher doesn’t understand that some of her students are never going to learn, and have lice. And the other students clue her in as to How Things Are. The tragedy is that How Things Are requires that some of the children are just trash, and disposable.
That’s why Tom Robinson has to be convicted. Not because they dislike him - far from it - but because they cannot give up the whole mythos of Pure White Southern Womanhood. Even if the woman accuser is trash, she is still white. And for the mythos to be preserved, White has to trump Black, no matter what.
And I don’t agree that there is no moral ambiguity in the novel. Recall the early episode of the nasty old woman whose lawn the older brother trashes, because she called him names. Atticus makes him go and read to her every afternoon, while she tries to kick her morphine habit. The old lady dies anyway, but she dies un-addicted. She is able to give up something, give up a great deal, in fact, to be independent. The town, unfortunately, does not have that courage. Yet the old lady is as racist as the worst characters anywhere in the novel.
And as mentioned, the prose works, if for no other reason than the brilliant line at the end of the trial. Atticus tried his best, and failed, and the black people condemned to sit in the balcony and watch recognize and respect that. And as Atticus is leaving the courtroom, the preacher, who is in charge of his people, says -
Scout has to stand up in respect for her father, just like the black people do. Because they are all on the same side. Not black vs. white anymore.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s amazing how obsessed with race the right has become since Obama’s election.
More Allen Barra
I’m not a huge fan of To Kill a Mockingbird, but I don’t agree that Harper Lee makes good guys and bad guys too obvious.
Remember, that it’s NICE people, for the most part, who come to the jail to lynch Tom Robinson. Nice people who are shamed into backing down by the presence of a little child. And it’s a racist who points a gun at the lynch mob, protecting Tom Robinson.
And while the plaintiff’s white trash father comes across as wholly evil, let’s not forget that it’s NICE people on the jury who convict Tom Robinson, even though they have to know he’s innocent.
Tom Robinson may be too saintly, and his accuser’s father too evil. But ultimately, it’s the ordinary people of the town who decide Tom Robinson’s fate. And those people are NOT presented as evil. They just do an evil thing anyway.
If Rush Limbaugh had MERELY said that McNabb was overrated, I’d have agreed 100%. But he wasn’t overrated because the media loves black quarterbacks- it’s because the young Donovan McNabb, like the young Michael Vick, was an EXCITING player! He could move around, and he could make some remarkable plays.
His problem was inconsistency. He often followed a brilliant play with a woefully underthrown pass, or an interception caused by a ridiculously bad read.
But even on his worst days, young McNabb could be counted on to make one or two plays that made the SportsCenter highlight reel.
THAT’S why he was overrated. Not because he was black, but because he made a few plays each game that made spectators say, “Wow.” McNabb’s problem was htat he made as many “Ugh” plays as “Wow” plays.
Um…no, Fitzgerald tells you what the green light means at the end of the book.
Um, no. The left has frequently brought up the topic. Race came up with Jeremiah Wright, Obama calling his white grandmother a “typical white person”, and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder calling the US a “nation of cowards” because “we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”