A New Look At: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Now playing on Broadway
Harper Lee probably had no idea the impact her novel, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, would have on American society when it was published in 1960. Lee herself, pulled back on some of her more open beliefs in the first draft of the book, which was published after her death under the title, GO SET A WATCHMAN.
A NEW LOOK: A PLAY ON BROADWAY
Now TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, definitely an American classic, forms the basis for a play written by Aaron Sorkin of THE WEST WING and NEWSROOM fame. Currently running on Broadway, every reviewer is eager to evaluate this new take on a beloved story. As Charles McNulty writes in the LA TIMES, this is the story about ...an idealistic attorney forced to confront the limitations of the law as an instrument of justice in a racist society.
Greg Evans writes in DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD: You know the plot. Scout and Jem Finch and friend Dill while away a summer that would have been sleepy without the drama and ugliness stirred up by the trial (Mayella Ewell has accused a black man, Tom Robinson, of raping her), a local event of outsize proportion that has unleashed a torrent of hate, bile and bigotry that a good man like Atticus Finch (who will defend the accused) didn’t see coming. He doesn’t recognize his own neighbors. Or as McNulty states: The Ku Klux Klan is made up of the same folks who shop at the hardware store on Saturday and fill the pews on Sunday.
KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS
This last point is the major tension in the novel. The Finch’s neighbor, old Mrs. Dubose, calls Scout an ugly little girl, and also uses racial slurs to attack Atticus for defending Tom Robinson. Truth: it was Mayella’s father who beat and raped her and then with no shame, blamed a black man.
Lee laid out many truths about our society—and Sorkin now chooses to highlight these, emphasizing that then and now we don’t often know the hearts and minds of our neighbors. In the south in the time of MOCKINGBIRD, this was a truism, one that Sorkin uses in his modern version to flash on recent sorrows that was Charlottesville. In the novel, Mrs. Dubose has chronic pain and is addicted to morphine. Is the United States, the southern states, addicted to racism?
RACISM, PART OF THE FABRIC OF OUR NATION
An article found on a site entitled Education, Seattle PI states: Mrs. Dubose’s addiction to morphine symbolizes the hold racism has on the South during the time period of the novel. She strives to restore herself and her traditional Southern values. Figuratively, the drug-induced stupor of Mrs. Dubose illustrates the South’s refusal to own and overcome its prejudice. Mrs. Dubose works to eradicate the morphine from her body and thus models the vigilant approach we also need to address social injustice, even if that was never her intent.
Calpurnia, the African American woman who keeps house for Atticus and helps raise Jem and Scout, has morphed into a stronger speaker in Sorkin’s play. Reviewer Evans writes: Calpurnia verbally dresses down Atticus for his naive faith in the goodness of his neighbors, his conviction that they’ll do the right thing when push comes to shove. They’re racist, sure, (Finch believes) but not to the extent of sending an innocent man to jail or worse.
Cal, of course, knows better, and she knows the white community in ways Atticus couldn’t imagine. Mrs. Dubose, Cal says, was a “Negro-hater” even before taking ill, before the morphine stopped easing the pain, before whatever other excuse Atticus has for the old woman’s hatefulness. Cal is barely surprised at the cops’ latest killing of an unarmed black man, and she lets Atticus know, in no uncertain terms, just how blind he is.
Evans writes in his review: Let Cal say what she wants, no explaining — this is the Mockingbird of our collective daydream, the Mockingbird we’re revisiting with our 21st century notions, and her boldness is as satisfying as the laugh that erupts from the actor who plays Tom Robinson, Gbenga Akinnagbe, when Atticus reveals his quaint notion of courtroom justice. And McNulty writes: Atticus’ insistence that you can’t judge a person till you crawl inside his skin and walk around in it is simplistic. Empathy is a weak defense against murderous, irrational hatred.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I find Lee’s choice of title for her novel to hold a truth we don’t see anymore–about the novel and maybe about ourselves.
Atticus Finch tells Scout: “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
When Scout ponders this, Miss Maudie, a neighbor, who also stands for the good in MayComb County, explains that mockingbirds are completely innocent song birds. They don’t harm and don’t deserve to be shot. This statement haunts the novel, for Boo Radley means no harm when he saves Jem and Scout, causing Tom Ewell’s death, and Tom Robinson was totally innocent, his only fault or crime being a black man in that place and in that time.
In our society today, we have many opportunities to meet people of all backgrounds and cultures and to enjoy the variety that makes the United States a unifying nation of people and ideas. Harper Lee knew the power of her story and how to bring it to the page. She knew that overplaying the small emotional moments in her characters lives would remain with the reader for years to come. As for our nation’s major sorrows, they are still with us. But it is the small moments of reconciliation, friendship and reaching out that will create a nation where mockingbirds are not harmed and good literature is still able to guide us.
Photos: thanks to Deadline Hollywood Website.
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