To Kill A Mockingbird - Part II

[Jennifer]

This is the thread for our July read. Please post comments here.

[Renee]

I'm only about half away through this part, but the chapters about the trial are just wonderful! I didn't want to put the book down! Mr. Ewell sure is a character though isn't he? Mayella was something else also. Like Dill, I didn't like the way Mr. Gilmer was treating Tom Robinson. He was talking down to him and very demeaning. Can't wait to finish it!

[Irene]

I liked the way the book made us sympathetic to the plight of the underclass no matter what race. The town's people exploited and discriminated against the Ewell's lso. There was child abuse and illiteracy and cruelty shown to those kids. And, when you are near the bottom of the social heap, you find someone else to stand on so that you have at least some claim to status, no matter how small. I love the way Atticus treats even those ignorant, impoverished, angry family members with dignity.

[Jennifer]

Irene, I haven't started reading this book for this read yet. I used to read it every summer for several years and can't wait to see if I still feel the same way about the characters. I loved Atticus' understanding of people and had so much respect for him because of the way he treated people. Interestingly, I worked with someone who attended law school in the U.K. and one of his assignments was to write an essay criticizing Atticus Finch. The only reason I can think to fault him is that he lent legitimacy to a justice system that was anything by just.

[Renee]

I finished it last night and I loved it! Jem knew there wasn't any possible way they could convict him, but because he was black and a white person was charging him (even if it was the Ewells) they did it anyway. I couldn't help but feel for Jem after the trial and I liked how Atticus tried to explain it to him. The court should be the only place where all people are equal, yet it was there that Tom Robinson was considered below everyone else and convicted. The second half of the story was very sad for me.

I couldn't believe at the end when Mr. Ewell attacked Jem and Scout walking home from the pageant. I couldn't help but feel he got what was coming to him though, for pressing charges against an innocent man and beating his children and attacking the poor Finch kids. I was very surprised to see Boo Radley back again and out of the house.

Loved the book. It was a quick read and it's definitely one I'll read again! So nice to re-read books from high school I remember reading but don't remember at all. It was like reading it for the first time. Now I have to find the movie and watch it also.

[Irene]

Jennifer, Did your friend say anything about the fault that his classmates or his prof found in Atticus?

[Jennifer]

No he didn't. I think the conversation was cut short due to some imaginary crisis in the office. I will be reading the book with that question in mind next week sometime. I still think that I will find very little to fault in Atticus, however.

[Alana]

Well, every parent and character has their faults of course, but when comparing them to the other horrid faults of other characters in this novel, what faults might exist will certainly seem small.

[Britany]

I think one of my favorites scenes was when Calpurnia takes Scout and Jem to her church! Just loved how they were able to experience that and loved how Scout asked about how are they going to sing without a hymnal? Just love the naivety throughout.

I also agree above that the courtroom scenes were the most climatic part of the entire book! I couldn't wait to see what happened! I think Harper Lee was just brilliant when characterizing Mayella and Mr. Ewell. I could clearly see what they looked like with mannerisms and dialect.

[Britany]

OH, and I also loved how Boo Radley made an 11th hour appearance. This really came full circle.

[Alana]

it's been so long since I'd read this that I'd forgotten all about the scene in front of the courthouse that Sunday night, but as I read it I remembered how powerful that scene was the first time I read it. such beautiful innocence! "don't you remember me, Mr Cunningham? " chilling.

[Irene]

One thing I appreciated about this book is how it humanized so many members of groups that society can so easily marginalize. So often I hear this book discussed in the context of racial prejudice. It certainly does capture the evil of racism well, but it is not just about that. From the frightened girl who is a victim of domestic violence to the old woman addicted to pain killers to the mentally ill recluse to.... This book forces the reader to look at each and see the humanity and not a sterotype. I think it continues to ask its reader "Who are you willing to compartmentalize, to write off because you have pigeon-holed her or him according to social images of that person? Do you have the guts to strip away those easy blinders and see the person that is actually standing there,in all his or her complexity?"

[Alana]

I had forgotten that from my first reading as well. (Irene, you articulate everything so well!) I had the racial prejudice in my mind and also the recluse in Boo Radley, but had forgotten the woman fighting tooth and nail to break her morphine addiction and the teasing kids at school and the lonely old ladies with nothing to do but berate people and the poor people who no one bothers to see something good in. Such richness to work with and so heartbreaking. And the innocence of seeing it through a child's eyes, a child who truly loves her friend despite his less than stellar manners and how dirty and poor he always is, makes the book brilliant.

[Irene]

I agree, Having a child narrate allows the theme of acceptance to come through without being preachy. Children have fewer prejudices than adults. They tend to ask "why" more naturally. And Adicus is able to gently guide his children into compassionate adulthood, and by extension, each of us readers. We are so quick to judge people by what we don't understand, to label them by our fears. We did it with Germans during the First World War and the Japanese Americans during the Second World War and we are doing it with Muslims today. We have done it with unwed mothers and AIDS patients and the mentally ill. We never seem to grow out of that caddy adolescent mentality that wants to gang up on the new kid, the poor kid the kid who is different so that our own fraility or failure is not noticed. At the same time we are teaching our children not to bully, we are finding all sorts of ways to ostrasize and stigmatize and marginalize people.

[Alana]

"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'."

I remember that scene being incredibly moving in the film. I'm going to have to watch that now, for sure.

I've read all this before, but all the food being given to Atticus and the way he handles everything the next day literally made me cry while reading it, something I rarely do while reading a book. And when he says that only children cry about it, the wrong things done in the world, it's just heartbreaking.

[Alana]

"As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it--whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash."

Great line, although I'd take it a step farther and say that any person of any color or background that cheats any other person of any color or background is trash. Which, I suppose, is what he's getting at, just with a more specific example.

[Alana]

I just read the section where the school kids are talking about Hitler. I know the book was published in 1960 but the setting is 1935, and while Hitler was in power and moving at that point, did the world at large really know much about what was going on with the Jews and others? I thought all of that was just getting started then and some of the worst didn't begin until the late 1930s. Or am I vastly mistaken on this?

[Jennifer]

That's an interesting observation Alana. I don't remember that part of the book, but will look for it when I read it next week. I am not sure what she said about the Jews under Hitler, so it's difficult to comment.

[Jennifer]

This is a link to a chronology of Jewish persecution I 1935.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/j...

[Alana]

Even from that, though, most of the stuff Hitler was famous for had only barely begun, and I don't think news of that had really traveled to the States, let alone to schoolchildren. Of course, that's not the point of that particular section; the idea is to show that we found prejudice against one group of people to be abhorrent, but were totally fine with prejudice against another group in our own land. It's all about hypocrisy. The part of me that's OCD about accuracy just has a problem with it, that's all. :)

[Britany]

Irene wrote: "I agree, Having a child narrate allows the theme of acceptance to come through without being preachy. Children have fewer prejudices than adults. They tend to ask "why" more naturally. And Adic..."

Perfectly stated Irene. :)