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