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Literary Review
personality
Mocking Bird magic
V. GANGADHAR
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What lies behind the enduring appeal of Harper Lee’s one and only novel?
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Universal appeal: The book continues to charm.
When I was asked to teach Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird to students at an Ahmedabad college, I did not know I would fall in love with the book. So did my students. I invited my Principal, P. G. Mavlankar, professor of political science, to talk to the students on the history of racial tension in the U.S., one of the book’s main themes. He too fell in love with Harper Lee’s first and only novel. I gave the books as birthday gifts to children who finished it at one sitting and went on rereading it.
Bestseller
Lee, a native of Alabama, published the book when she was 34. As the book climbed on the bestseller lists for months and bagged the Pulitzer Prize for the best work of fiction in 1961, she observed that Maycomb town was similar to Alabama. It was unbelievable that a novel so ‘American’ in nature had such an appeal in the distant city of Ahmedabad. It was this universal appeal that fetched it eternal glory and led to the conferring of America’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Honour, on author Harper Lee.
What exactly was this universal appeal? The antics of the three children — Scout, Jem and Dill — appealed to young readers. Mature readers were fascinated by Scout and Jem’s relationship with their father, lawyer Atticus Finch and the underlying racial tensions of Maycomb town.
The American South, as presented in the book was a hotbed of racial hatred and intolerance. A poor, physically deformed black man Tom Robinson is framed for rape when he turned down advances by a white woman. Found guilty by a racist jury, he tries to flee and is shot down by the local police. American history is full of such instances where innocent blacks were killed and lynched on the most frivolous counts. Lee did not hide any of these prejudices in the book. The racists were a group of unpleasant characters and the blacks could expect no justice or mercy from the local cops or courts. Yet, if the novel was not all gloomy tragedy, it was because of the character of Atticus French who emerged as one of the greatest creations of modern American fiction.
Atticus lived in a racist and sexist society but was not corrupted by it. He accepts the brief to defend the black man because the judge gave it to him. Never a fire-breathing reformer, Atticus was free of any prejudices and wanted changes in Maycomb society to come from within. He is described as the same man in the court room as on public streets. One character in the book succinctly sums up his character, “There are some men in the world who were born to do unpleasant jobs for us. Atticus is one of them.”
No stereotypes
I was a young father when I first read To Kill A Mocking Bird and I wanted to be a father like Atticus, who had to bring up two children on his own. The black maid, Calpurnia, was a big help. He treated both Scout and Jem like intelligent adults but was quick to punish them for bad behaviour. Atticus followed no stereotype and allowed Scout to continue as a tomboy provided she followed the basic rules. On their part, they romped about fascinated by the happenings at the mysterious Radley House, particularly the wraith-like figure of Arthur (‘Boo’) Radley, an object of gossip in the village. Atticus, even allowing for the inborn curiosity of the children, did not want them to intrude into the privacy of the special world of Boo.
The novel had a moral too, as brought out by the title. In a town where guns and hunting were common, it was unethical to shoot and kill the innocent Mocking Bird. Why? “The mocking bird makes music for us to enjoy. They don’t do anything but sing their hearts out to us and that’s why it is a sin to kill them.” This is a plea for the innocent and the harmless and in the book they are personified as Boo Radley and the unfortunate Tom Robinson. The allegory is quite clear.
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