To Kill a Mockingbird (redux)

To Kill a Mockingbird

By Harper Lee

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1961

Features on the Time Magazine Top 100

You know what can refresh your memory of a book fairly quickly? Teaching it to four classes. A few months ago I wrote a post about To Kill a Mockingbird which may have come off a little glib. It certainly felt a tad dismissive when I read it over a few minutes ago. It’s time to make amends.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a pretty extraordinary book. The central character, Scout, is a little girl who is working out, in a sort of trial and error method, her own sense of morality. Through her eyes we see the other characters that fill out her world. Her brother Jem brow beats her about being a girl, then hits puberty and becomes growingly distant. Her father Atticus is a lawyer with a strong sense of justice, and tries through various subtle means to instill in his children a strong social conscience. The cook Calpurnia is a no nonsense caretaker who Scout resents at times, but mostly comes to love and admire. Her friend Dill has a romantic view of the world that at times will lead him to despair because of his innocent nature.

Set in Alabama during the Great Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird deals first with Scout’s desire to befriend Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbor whose odd behavior has ignited her imagination. Later Scout becomes caught up with a criminal trial that her father is involved in. Scout is an observer here, and the scenes in the courtroom, while riveting, do more to show Scout working out how her sense of right and wrong are at odds with her society. The two plot strands eventually come together in a surprising and poignant way, leading to a final moment in the book that is both poetic and kind of overwhelming.

I still haven’t rewatched the film version, but I hope to soon. While I stand by my ambivalence towards Gregory Peck, I think that he was sort of made for this part. As I reread the book it was impossible not to picture him as Atticus. Woe be to anyone that attempts to remake this movie.

Coming soon: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited

By Evelyn Waugh

Featured on Time Magazine’s Top 100

       I guess this is two books in a row that deal with England in a way that shows how the country has evolved from the class conscious society that it was, to what it is now (which is slightly less class conscious). Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is a novel that tells the story of an antiquated aristocratic system that is going through its final death throes. The narrator, Charles Ryder, is a man from a family of means that has fallen on difficult times. He attends Oxford, as is expected of him, and befriends a group of young men who have a lot of money to throw around, and who are less interested in academics than they are in more immediate pleasures. Chief among these is Sebastian Flyte, the youngest son of an aristocratic family. The friendship between Charles and Sebastian leads to a connection to the Flyte family, and to trips to visit his friends at their estate, the palatial Brideshead.

       The Flyte family is Catholic, a fact which provides a degree of tension in the text. Catholicism is not rare in England, but there is a historical stigma that goes along with it. At one point practicing Catholicism was an offense that brought the death penalty, and this is an old family from a traditional home. As a result, following strict Catholic dogma is not something that the characters can easily shed. It is as if it is imprinted in their DNA. Lord Brideshead, the father, left his wife after fighting in World War I. But because of her strict Catholicism he is unable to divorce her. Instead he lives in exile in Venice. The affections of Charles gradually shift from Sebastian to his sister Julia, but this relationship is also doomed because of Charles’ atheism.

Charles is an artist, and he finds his muse in Brideshead. The architecture and perfection of the house fascinates him. But the way of life that the house represents is quickly disappearing, and the people who walk the halls are becoming irrelevant. There is a great scene in the movie Gosford Park, in a manor quite similar to Brideshead. An American film director is talking about a movie he is making, but stops short of revealing the end. “But none of us will see it!”says a snarky Maggie Smith, and the rest of the dinner guests laugh at the American’s expense. Ultimately, the joke was on Maggie Smith.

            This was a pretty great book, and a rather quick breezy read (for a book about classism in Pre World War II England that is). Charles Ryder, the narrator, is not the most dynamic of characters, but the people he observes are fascinating. He is also quite adept at describing situations he is in with a humorous flair.

            There have been two filmed versions of Brideshead Revisited. One was made for British television, and starred Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder. I have not seen it, but have heard that it is a rather stunning achievement. There was another version that came out in 2007. That version was…okay. The three main characters were all played by actors I was unfamiliar with. Emma Thompson played Sebastian and Julia’s mother and Michael Gambon played their father. The scenery was beautiful, but the film itself was hurt by its lack of subtlety.

Coming soon: I revisit (Get it? Yeah, you got it.) To Kill a Mockingbird