Thank you. I kind of got the impression that the OP doesn’t understand how fiction works, but I didn’t know whether or not that was fair to say.
I’m not being an ass here or trying to be sarcastic…its completely possible the OP works at The Root or a similar workplace where him and everyone he knows is woke AF and genuinely hate it.
But as i said above, everyone I knew recognized it as not only fiction but as the narrator being unreliable.
…And finally maybe the OP is just giving us fun snark such as “12 Angry Men would never work today. Good luck getting a switch blade through the metal detector”
Can you translate? What is “The Root”, “woke AF”?
The OP is missing out on a great book and good movie. Atticus is a good man and does his best to free a kind, innocent man, but in the end Tom Robinson is convicted and likely murdered while the evil, child beating, attempted murderer is only stopped because a crazy person was looking out for the kids. It is a searing indictment of the entire town and its racism. Just because it is not a heavy handed sermon does not mean it is any kind of apology.
I myself see the same sort of thing happening today with stereotypes of uneducated white men ruining the country running rampant in the news while the inhabitants of homogenous gated communities scoff at the notion that they may be part of the problem.
I have not seen anything I would consider to be solid research that confirms my feelings or the feelings of those who disagree. I wonder if there is any way to quantify any of these things or if we are all left to rely upon the sanctity of our isms.
From earlier:
I do wonder if my opinion differs based on how view Atticus impacts the story.
I personally don’t see Atticus as a perfect hero, and his attempts to be a savior failed and he chose to violate what Scout thought was a strict Moral code by lying about the knife. Sure he guided Scout on Scout’s arc in the story it was Scout’s observation of Boo’s kindness and her lesson to treat people as individuals.
Sure people should be reading more like The Invisible Man and The Bluest Eye…But I am not getting the “without requiring them to be there” part.
As Mrs Lee’s own father was a lawyer in Alabama I am not sure why the location is an issue. As Southern conservatives Senators blocked anti-lynching laws 100’s of times over the past century it would be a bit silly to have the story in another location too.
Now let me be clear, in the 1930’s Seattle was far more segregated than the South and the KKK was probably more powerful, the same as today. They didn’t need to resort to lynching to intimidate other minorities up here so typically they would just murder someone or the police were expected to be biased.
But I did read too much Philip K. Dick growing up so I admit I never expect a character to be flawless or a hero and that could color the interpretation.
I do see how if you interpret the story a celebrating Atticus’ failures as being presented as ideal it could be viewed that way. I personally think Atticus Finch reveres the jury so much that he is blind to that reality. Scout is moving past him on her arc and that Boo shows her how her Father’s imperfect and part of the problem although that portion is not resolved in the story.
His statement to the kids after the verdict as demonstrates the flaws in his claimed morality and that he knows it is flawed.
But ya, if you interpret it so that Atticus “saved” anyone or that the racial issue was answered it could be whitewashing, but if you view him as a flawed parent figure who wants his children to be better than him that is a harder claim.
In my interpretation is that the climax is when Scout figures out that Boo isn’t a monster and to consider his point of view and that in the future we need to do the same with the racial problems. The fact that Atticus ignored the problem was one of his failings that IMHO was pushing Scout along her arc.
Personally I would have had more of a problem if there was a Disney/Spielberg like ending where somehow racial prejudice was solved. Part of the reason I respect the work is that they don’t pretend that problem of race was solved and inferred that it needed to be addressed.
That said, I am a white dude and have no idea how it would be viewed from the perspective of someone who has had experiences I will never experience or understand it from the viewpoint of a minority.
Right, but TKAM is explicitly based on the Scottsboro Boys case, and no one stepped up for that one. In the entire state of Alabama, the only lawyer who was willing to serve as the defense attorney was a 69 year old retired lawyer who didn’t bother to even make closing arguments or argue against the death penalty. After the international outrage and the appeals, the communists brought in Walter Pollack.
One of the Scottsboro boys was 12. He was the only one not found guilty because even though the prosecution did not seek the dealth penalty in his case, 7 of the 5 jurors were not willing to sentence him to anything other than death, and the jury hung on the fact that the other 5 wanted life in prison. For a 12 year old.
Again, I’ve no problem with Lee writing the book. But teaching it without the context of what really happened in the south when black men were accused of sexual impropriety is whitewashing. The South wasn’t able to produce its own heros. There’s a crucial lesson there in how pervasive, how powerful the Jim Crow system was.
I disagree. There are some parallels, but it more appears to be based upon her fathers similar case.
To Kill a Mockingbird hits a kind of rhetorical sweet spot, in that it allows white people to safely acknowledge the harm done by racism while still plausibly telling themselves it’s other people’s fault. It was a mainstream novel that embodied prevailing mainstream views: that lynchings and the threat of violence represented an aberration of the normal order, rather than a sanctioned means of enforcing that order; that white supremacy is an attitude held by a few egregious bigots, rather than a system expressly created to deprive black Americans of the rights of citizenship, and in which virtually all white people are complicit; and so on.
By and large, this is still the prevailing narrative regarding race in this country today, which is why the book remains so beloved. (That and it’s a good read for kids, and easy to teach from.) TKAM doesn’t accurately depict what life in the Jim Crow South was like, but it probably isn’t possible to do that in a book parents would permit their children to read. A realistic depiction of the events of To Kill a Mockingbird would read like a horror story.
Still, in a country that even now refuses to honestly grapple with the causes and consequences of white supremacy — in a country where most white people can’t admit white supremacy even exists — there is a danger in assigning TKAM to students in the self-righteous belief that we are teaching them something about America’s past. I think Manda JO has it right. By all means, teach TKAM for its literary merits and the worthy ideals espoused by its hero, but bring in some historical context, and let us maybe start to move beyond the myths.
Lee’s father actually changed from a segregationist to becoming an advocate for integration while she was writing the book.
Thus Atticus Finch transforming from a racist to a failed white savior in the book. I guess the fact he failed at the savior part is why I don’t see it as promoting that flawed concept which I fully admit is still dehumanizing and a continuing real problem.
In my interpretation it is a step and a pitfall that many of us white people fall into when we first realize that some people have a very different set of experiences and unjust challenges.
Looking over other reviews to the book it does seem a lot of people view his actions as heroic, so I can’t explain my interpretation except that I, as stated, to tend to error to looking for potential hero’s flaws due to the books I read.
It does appear that “Go Set a Watchman”, which I have not read, disappointed a lot of people who did view him as a hero figure.
I am not claiming to be enlightened and I consider myself of average intelligence but I reserve the concept of civil-rights hero for individuals like John Lewis and not characters who are struggling to figure out that they are part of the problem.
I taught TKAM many times, and I did wince at the white paternalism, but TKAM, must be read and taught in the context of the time it was written and the time it was set. The Scottsboro case is part of that context: it was the event that inspired (read “enraged”) Lee and occurred in the same era the novel was set. But the book was written in 1959 (pub. 1960), a time of enormous struggle for Civil Rights but an era when the prevailing white views were that Blacks had a natural sense of rhythm and Black men were better endowed (hyper-sexualized, more likely to rape).
The fact is, Lee had to stack the deck to appeal to and convert whites who’d been raised with those stereotypes. So yeah, Tom Robinson is the soft-spoken “Good Negro” and is a stark contrast to proud and defiant Scottsboro defendant Haywood Patterson, and Atticus Finch is a man of irreproachable integrity and, unlike equally brilliant but flamboyant Scottsboro defender Samuel Leibowitz, a Christian Southerner. I’d argue they had to be to be depicted that way. Yet the Maycomb missionary society ladies, who express views common to both the 30s and the early 60s, are depicted as small-minded and back-biting. Readers didn’t like them and didn’t want to be like them. Uncle Tom’s Cabin does this, too, and while it’s a poorly-written novel, it was an equally powerful social force.
TKAM is a beautifully written tour-de-force, which is why it won the Pulitzer. Some schools replaced it with other excellent books, books that require a lot less historical prep and explanation. Times are a-changin’.
The reason that they should teach this book is not just its literary merits. It is about empathy and the need to take other people’s position and see things from the point of view of others. Atticus was able to see Tom as a person and thus changed. This is why the civil rights movement was so succesful, people were able to see each other races as people and not just racial avatars. The book is a microcosm of why and how the country changed.
How so? It was about rape, not murder. It was a trumped up case of rape used to blur the fact that a white woman might have has a voluntary sexual association with a black man. Sex, rape–these are the things that were beyond the pale, that made the community mad with rage. A murder might have gone unpunished–in fact, one did, in the novel. But a white woman lusting after a black man: the sin had to be atoned for with the sacrifice of Tom Robbins.
To be specific, that just like the book, the change got hung up at having other white people available to blame for being “the real racists”, and the change that could have happened therefore mostly didn’t.
My understanding is that she claimed that it was actually a composite inspiration and she was thinking more of something less sensational. Lord knows there were incidents enough to choose from. Separate from the men her father tried to defend before she was born, was the 1933 or '34 case of Walter Lett. He was accused of raping a white woman in her home town of Monroeville and convicted based on apparently very shaky evidence. She was nine or ten when he was convicted and sentenced to death, maybe 12 when he was granted clemency( too late to save his sanity after three years behind bars )and her father’s paper covered the whole thing. I have no doubt the Scottsboro case inspired her, but it probably wasn’t her primary touchstone for the novel.
Not that your basic point doesn’t still stand, of course.
To late to add: I might have those dates and ages messed up. She was younger and it looks like he died in 1937, but was pardoned in 1934( and convicted in 1933 ).
Book. 1 adult accused Rapist, who knew the victim quite well. One victim.
Real: Nine boys and young adults. Two Victims. The accused had never met them.
But in the novel, the real rapist was punished, not so IRL.
In fact , there are many more differences than similarities.
Yes, you have black men accused of raping white women and getting a unfair trial, but that happened dozens of times in the South.
While I can’t speak to the exact motivations here, nor can I speak to Lee’s motivation I would argue that Bacon’s rebellion and the rise of anti-miscegenation laws with the intent of protecting a “rare resource” for white males in a property makes this subject particularly appropriate topic for discussions around race conflict.
As Lee’s father’s case revolved around theft at a hardware store it wouldn’t illustrate the dehumanization for both blacks or white women.
Mayella Ewell seducing Tom firmly establishes his Innocence and while it appears that we as a society are dealing with slut shaming and rape, didn’t those laws penalties apply to both the man and the woman? I doubt that white women were typically jailed commonly for to anti-miscegenation but with the combination of social stigma, perjury and admitting to a felony still adds to the cost for Mayella.
Sure it is probably due to and plays into rape myths and slut shaming. But this predated Loving v. Virginia and women didn’t even have the right to buy birth control without their husbands permission at the time.
Lee could have done a better job with Mayella Ewell and I see how that could be a problem in a modern context but the part about geranium’s, her father’s abuse and her statement about never being kissed (using racist terms) in a context where that made her less valuable as “property” at the time slightly tempers the fact that there is very little to make her a likable character.
To quote John Lewis:
My view is almost certainly due to confirmation bias and ignorance, but I don’t expect an Author to fully transcend the zeitgeist of the time.
Until O’Connor v. Donaldson in 1975 there were still women who were involuntarily committed to the state mental hospitable in my home town merely for being sexually active.
TKAM is far from perfect, but I do want to understand what I am apparently missing here. Atticus never lives up to his own advice, including spending most of his time convincing the jury that he is honorable while failing to do the same with Tom Robinson.
Atticus Finch is assigned to defend Tom Robinson and didn’t volunteer, he is playing to the system and failing to demonstrate the empathy that he preaches. In my mind it is Scout who learns to “climb into” another person’s "skin and walk around in it” despite the supposed adults not living up to their own advice.
I know that people think of the movie as focusing on civil rights but doesn’t the story of Tom Robinson mostly serve to teach Scout about injustice and to challenge her ideas about the fairness of society.
I fully admit that minorities are typically diminished in their roles in media. In the case of the trial in TKMB my interpretation is that is exactly what the trial illustrates. Perhaps I have just justified it as so in my mind as the book lead me into reading more.
As a white guy who grew up in Wyoming I doubt I would have stopped and listened to John Lewis’ speech against DOMA while flipping past C-Span in the 1996 without being exposed to TKAM.
That speech was a watershed moment for my journey. TKAM isn’t one of my favorite stories to be honest but I am grateful it prodded me to learn more.