Re: To Kill a Mockingbird: Chapters 7 - 12
Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2020 5:18 pm
While this is undoubtedly true, in another sense it is overwrought. A symbol participates in the matter symbolized, as the Constitution symbolizes democracy, and we need to think not so much of the innocence of the mockingbird, and of Tom Robinson, as of the sinfulness of lording it over weaker folk "because we can". There is a specific contrast with Atticus' reluctance to shoot a mad dog, which is innocent in a moral sense but a deadly danger nonetheless. But he doesn't kill it for gratuitous target practice, or any other kind of ego boost.Robert Tulip wrote:The mockingbird symbolises the innocent black man Tom Robinson whom Atticus is defending. Unlike pious people who harp on about alleged sins that are just matters of social convention, the statement from Atticus that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird is presenting the prophetic line of the moral centrality of recognising shared humanity and justice. He is saying that the entrenched racism of Alabama is morally evil, and that the lynch mob is the equivalent of the baying crowd who condemned the innocent man Jesus Christ to the cross.
Undoubtedly Atticus can see the evil of the system of segregation and oppression, though in "Watchman" we see a very different side of his relationship to the system. And undoubtedly he wants Jem to have a sense of the evil in gratuitous victimization of anything, but he does not make the connection explicit and so we are meant to make the connection ourselves. In such a literary situation, we should avoid being reductionist and try to feel the connections being made to other aspects of the living situation. For me, the connection to instruction of a child is paramount: Lee wants us to understand that Atticus has a pervasive view of life and what makes it worthy, a view that includes how you use your first rifle as much as how you decide between conscience and social pressure.
Mrs. Dubose is an interesting character. Her irascibility is clearly part nature and part circumstance. Atticus chooses to focus on the hardship driving her to be insulting the the children. I interpreted that as charitable allowances, and again an effort to help his children see the big picture despite their hurt feelings.Robert Tulip wrote:Chapter 11 tells the story of Mrs Dubose, again illustrating the Christian compassion of Atticus, following the Biblical dictum of love your enemies. This horrible old woman likes nothing better than to criticise Scout and Jem when they walk past her house, doing her very best to get under the skin in the meanest possible way.Not only was Scout abandoning her aristocratic heritage through her tomboy lifestyle, but Mrs Dubose considers Atticus a traitor to his race. This conversation raises the caste analysis that Isabel Wilkerson studies in our current non-fiction selection. Naturally such emotional divisions provoke fury. It also raises the problem of who Mrs Dubose means by “trash”.Mrs. Dubose held us: “Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the courthouse lawing for niggers!” Jem stiffened. Mrs. Dubose’s shot had gone home and she knew it: “Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a Finch goes against his raising? I’ll tell you!” She put her hand to her mouth. When she drew it away, it trailed a long silver thread of saliva. “Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!” Jem was scarlet.
Insult is a prime instrument and crucible for dominance systems. We are only 200 years out of the codes of dueling, and some parts of the world still function that way. An insult must be avenged with blood. Thus dominance becomes the ability to give insult with impunity, and a person who will not defend the honor of himself and his family is a coward. Jem feels the insult, but Atticus responds to it with the ability to rise above those feelings and see poor Mrs. Dubose as a victim herself.
Well, that's a marvelous riff on American caste, but the writer, Don MacLean, was apparently scanning the music scene of the 60s, and the good ol' boys referred to were, according to folklore, the band of Buddy Holly whose death the song is woven around. The Sergeants were, according to my sources anyway, the Beatles (Sergeant Pepper's band). I've forgotten the clues as to who the players were - Stones? Beach Boys? Dunno. But I am pretty sure Buddy Holly's Lubbock origins have more to do with the good ol' boys in the song than any evocation of caste.Robert Tulip wrote:These images remind me of American Pie:What stronger symbol is there of American caste attitudes than good ol’ boys drinking whiskey and rye? Wikipedia defines good ol’ boys asDon Maclean wrote:Now the half-time air was sweet perfume While the Sergeants played a marching tune We all got up to dance Oh, but we never got the chance 'Cause the players tried to take the field The marching band refused to yield Do you recall what was revealed The day the music died.Tom Robinson is of course not a good ol’ boy.“often derogatory meaning—a friendly, unambitious, relatively uneducated white man who embodies the stereotype of the folksy culture of the South. A good old boys network has the connotation of this sort of personality combined with cronyism. This southern term also refers to the personal and friendly relationship between common citizens and local authorities usually resulting in lenient or sometimes no punishments for crimes committed by friends of law enforcement.”
Southern culture is contested territory, as "Mockingbird" itself shows. Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" is the emblem of that battle, being an answer to Neil Young's "Southern Man" and "Alabama," but one could also cite William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Toni Morrison, Tom Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren, Ray Charles, much of Blues music, and a host of other landmarks of creativity. The tension between allegiance to home and the truth of the racist evil heart of darkness in the South, transfigured by the Lost Cause mythology which pretended there was something noble about the Will to Power at the apex of the dominance system, made for some mighty inner struggle and mighty expressions of the fallen human condition. We should re-visit this set of issues as we go through the book.
You may be right about the reason for Jem's penance, though I never considered the possibility. But I think Lee means us to understand it as more of a symbol of Atticus' enlightened parenting. If Mrs Dubose really despised the family she would not be interested in having Jem come and suffer in her presence. She really is lonely and afraid of dying and struggling with the grasp of morphine.Robert Tulip wrote:Back to Mrs Dubose. Atticus, his voice like the winter wind, insists on the redemptive punishment of Jem reading Ivanhoe to the old lady every weekend for a month, an insistence which Scout considers an act of disloyalty on the part of Atticus.
The context of the need to keep in good with Mrs Dubose is partly explained by Atticus when he says “This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience —Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man… before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”” Despite being a pariah, it seems winning the case depends on Atticus being perceived as a loyal white, and Jem’s penance is about Atticus’ reputation.
Atticus does indeed know that he is fated to be part of his community. He no doubt understands his enlightened and therefore somewhat alienated position as a reason why he should be in the legislature and serve as attorney - a sort of noblesse oblige. Yet I don't think his partly mercenary motives extend to trying to suck up to a dying old harridan. Who would ever know? She probably doesn't have much social time with the other good ol' gals.
We have gone through 60 years of flux, when the dominant idea of the American dream was escape to reinvent oneself in Hollywood or Silicon Valley or Boston or New York. Who knows if the idea of being anchored in one's community will ever make a solid comeback - people now choose their friends and even their family, and the choice of sensibility and style seems to be the Great Work of many people's lives. Are you a follower of George Carlin and Willie Nelson, or of John Oliver and Hillary Clinton, or of Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish, or of Van Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates, or of Oprah Winfrey and Brene Brown? On the other side of this strange new cultural milieu, I think it would be good to look back with the ability to perceive the human drama in the challenge to critique one's community even while knowing you are part of it.
It just shows how poor that person is. Here is the triumph of the individualistic humanism of Locke and Emerson: we can think our way to new values, and rise above the "common" and ignorant systems that brought us the Third Reich and the nuclear menace. But if we pretend that we can think other people to new values, we are in danger of calling down Trumpist populism on our heads, of consigning our society to the status of deplorables and finding that our effort to lead and reform has merely created resentment and a determined, reckless assertion of tribalism and patriarchy for the sake of bruised egos.“Scout,” said Atticus, “nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean anything—like snot-nose. It’s hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.” “You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?” “I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody… I’m hard put, sometimes— baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. So don’t let Mrs. Dubose get you down. She has enough troubles of her own.”
In Birmingham they love the Governor.