Question #3-Race and Class in To Kill a Mockingbird

[[deleted user]]

Jem describes to Scout the four "folks" or classes of people in Maycomb County: "our kind of folks don't like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don't like the Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks." What do you think of the ways in which Lee explores race and class in 1930s Alabama?

[Susan]

Lawrence Hill wrote a thoughtful review of Go Set a Watchman in the Globe and Mail. He explores Lee's depiction of race in both her novels. He states, "to modern readers both works can be found wanting in one key respect. With the minor exception of the character Calpurnia, the black cook who runs the household in To Kill a Mockingbird but has left the employ of Atticus Finch in Go Set a Watchman, there is not a single three-dimensional, fully rendered black character in either book.

Harper Lee writes about racism in America without writing about blacks. Her characters are virtually all white. Her world is white. And it is through the experiences of white people that racism is addressed and dramatized. That is not a bad thing. Harper Lee has every right to write about the world as she has come to know and experience it. But, ultimately, Harper Lee’s novels offer a limited perspective on what it means to be black in America."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/b...

I like to think that Tom Robinson is three-dimensional, although we never come to know much about his family life. We never know much about Cal's private life, either.

Jem's sentence above is simply brilliant. It describes four classes of people who don't interact and don't try to understand one another. By putting faces to these classes, the reader immediately understands the lines between them. As a child, Scout crosses these lines. She helps the Cunningham boy get lunches on school days; she sees Atticus defending Tom Robinson. She is raised by Calpurnia. The lessons she learns in childhood make her realize that racism is wrong.

[Emily]

Susan wrote: "Lawrence Hill wrote a thoughtful review of Go Set a Watchman in the Globe and Mail. He explores Lee's depiction of race in both her novels. He states, "to modern readers both works can be found wan..."

I love Lawrence Hill's take on To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee's account of life in the South during this time period is definitely a limited perspective, zeroing in on what it meant to be white during this time. An example of the limit of this voice is when Scout fleshes out the class variance within the white people of Maycomb, but places all of the people of colour together in one class - something that shows the limit of her own perspective (as there were spectrums of class present in black communities in the South at this time as well).

I often find myself wondering about the experience of high school kids assigned to read this novel - it wouldn't read the same to every student. Students who may have experienced racism in their own lives would likely experience the novel differently from students who may have been more sheltered from exposure to racism (whether personally or in their social or familial periphery). I remember really appreciating To Kill a Mockingbird as a teen, but I also remember feeling more deeply changed and impacted by the first-person fictionalization of life in the Japanese internment camps in Canada during WWII, represented in Joy Kogawa's Obasan. First-person explorations of oppression always feel more compelling to me - and those are the voices I feel are most important to raise up above being 'written about' by voices in the dominant narrative. At the time that To Kill a Mockingbird was written and released, though, it would have been difficult for black voices to be published, and the fact that that Lee was using her privileged position to shed light on racism was, in and of itself, important.

[Susan]

Emily wrote: "Susan wrote: "Lawrence Hill wrote a thoughtful review of Go Set a Watchman in the Globe and Mail. He explores Lee's depiction of race in both her novels. He states, "to modern readers both works ca..."
So many important points, here, Emily. Thank you. You're so right about the impact of the first-person narrative to help us feel and understand others. Wouldn't it be interesting to hear Tom Robinson's side of the story? And I always wanted to know more about his wife.

Your reference to Obasan made me think about Requiem by Frances Itani. It too is written in the first person and is a powerful, fictionalized account of a Japanese-Canadian boy's internment during WWII.

[Maureen]

Emily wrote: "Susan wrote: "Lawrence Hill wrote a thoughtful review of Go Set a Watchman in the Globe and Mail. He explores Lee's depiction of race in both her novels. He states, "to modern readers both works ca..."

Thanks for the link, Susan, and for your thoughts, Emily. I really admired Hill's review; it covered so so fairly many of the thoughts that I had had about Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman.

The debate on appropriation of voice continues but, as you mentioned, Emily, it's unlikely that anyone of colour could've published a book about race in the sixties.

Have to confess, I had to re-read that quote mentioned above a couple of times; the first reading, it sounded like Jem was trying to figure out where everyone in Maycomb fit into the fabric of things; the second reading, I realized he probably set his family a bit apart when he said 'folks like us'. After all, he and Scout had invited a Cunningham home for lunch and attended the African church.