Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (30 page)

Still, the romantic figure of Mr. Dolphus Raymond that emerges from Jem's narrative is in itself symbolic of the harshness of life, and especially of life in a small Southern town, where condemnation and interference are never far away. Jem's tale of Mr. Raymond suggests that he is primarily a tragic figure, who lives with the Negroes because his history makes him unfit to live in harmony with so-called normal society, and more tragic yet is the fact that his children are sent up North because neither “colored” nor “white folk” will have them. Thus, Mr. Dolphus Raymond represents a warning to those who would cross the color line: banishment from one's own society and condemnation to an uneasy life among the colored folk.

Yet, this is not all there is to Mr. Dolphus, as becomes clear when Scout makes his acquaintance personally after taking the crying Dill away from the hustle and bustle of the courtroom. As Mr. Raymond offers Dill a sip from his paper sack, it is discovered that in fact it contains “nothing but Coca-Cola” (
TKAM
227). But Mr. Raymond does more than simply expose his paper sack trick; he also explains why he does it:

“You mean why do I pretend? Well, it's very simple,” he said. “Some folks don't—like the way I live. Now I could say the hell with 'em, I don't care if they don't like it. I do say I don't care if they don't like it, right enough-but I don't say the hell with 'em, see? . . . I try to give 'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason. When I come to town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say Dolphus Raymond's in the clutches of whiskey—that's why he won't change his ways. He can't help himself, that's why he lives the way he does.” (
TKAM
228)

It is interesting that Mr. Raymond's description of what “they” say of him, matches reasonably closely what Jem reported at the pre-trial “gala occasion.” Therefore Mr. Raymond seems to have a pretty astute view of the way Maycomb works, and his final reason for pretending to be a drunk—“They could never, never understand that I live like do because that's the way I want to live” (
TKAM
228)—would then also be the truth. The ugliness that the trial has already shown, and is yet to bring, is rooted in the same opinion that caused Mr. Dolphus Raymond's expulsion from Maycomb's polite society. As Atticus describes it when he explains “nigger-lover” to Scout, “Ignorant, trashy people use it [the term] 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” (
TKAM
124).

Yet what Mr. Raymond's example shows is a rejection of favoring Negroes over whites by the whole town, not just by “ignorant trashy people.” Thus Mr. Raymond's example, more than the actions of the mob that want to run the jail, the name-calling, or even Ewell's attack on Jem and Scout, symbolizes Maycomb's belief, however much hidden in Maycomb truths, in what Atticus calls “the evil assumption—that
all
Negroes lie, that
all
Negroes are basically immoral beings, that
all
Negro men are not to be trusted around our women” (
TKAM
232). It is in Mr. Dolphus Raymond that Harper Lee confronts her readers with how much further they may yet have to travel before they are able to truly reject Atticus's “evil assumption.”

Mr. Dolphus Raymond seems, however, to be less tragic than Jem originally represents him. He chooses to reject the life that was planned for him because he likes living the way he does. Rather than being ostracized over drinking and his bad behavior, Mr. Raymond uses his Coca-Cola to trick the town into giving him the freedom he craves.

Yet even Coca-Cola is not innocent in the complicated caste system that is Maycomb County: only the “more affluent chased their food with drug-store Coca-Cola” (
TKAM
182), while others drink warm milk from fruit jars, and the Negroes, sitting together with Mr. Dolphus Raymond, drink “the more vivid flavors of Nehi Cola” (
TKAM
182). Even in his rejection of the upper crust of Maycomb society, Mr. Raymond's tastes still reflect theirs, as symbolized by his choice of an “innocent” beverage.

More importantly, in his defense of his behavior, Mr. Raymond never seems to wonder what the effect of his choices are on the people he chooses to live among. From Jem's story, for what it is worth, there is some indication that there is a long and loving relationship with the African American woman he is living with, but how much can we rely on that? And even if Mr. Raymond has such long-lasting loving feelings for her, how much freedom does she ever feel to reject him? All such questions remain unexplored by the text, as Mr. Dolphus Raymond, for all his fascinating position and behavior, is no more than a minor character in a large cast.

Yet, as an unreformed sinner who flaunts his drinking and lives with a Negro woman and their children, Mr. Dolphus Raymond represents the most blatant, visible rejection of Maycomb's mores and truths. No wonder, then, that once Scout makes contact with this mythical degenerate, she is loath to leave him, even for the spectacle of Atticus's closing arguments: “Between two fires, I could not decide which I wanted to jump into: Mr. Raymond or the 5th Judicial Circuit Court” (
TKAM
229).

Conclusion

In
To Kill a Mockingbird
these three episodes are not the pivotal points in the narrative. For that we would have to look at the scene outside the jailhouse or examine the trial and the eventual murder of Tom Robinson. Yet the three episodes show the development of Scout's ability to challenge the conventions of Maycomb, to see her father in a new light, and to “play the system.” Thus they constitute essential elements in
To Kill a Mockingbird
that establish it as a bildungsroman as well as a social commentary.

The three scenes question the status quo in 1930s Alabama and interrogate the present-day world as well. In these episodes, the narrative does not avoid the difficult questions that lie beyond the good/bad equation. In the Tim Johnson episode, notions about masculinity, Southern honor, and premonitions are challenged, while during Scout's first day of school, she and the reader are confronted by the fact that conventional wisdom doesn't travel very well when it is given close, firsthand inspection. Finally, the Mr. Dolphus Raymond episode shows ways to play the system, but be warned: you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

Thus
To Kill a Mockingbird
creates and uses symbols to great effect, while at the same time drawing our attention to how these myths are little more that social constructions, and are not to be confused with actual truth. Lee's novel posits uncomfortable questions and positions and demands attention, not just to convince us to do the right thing but to challenge the ease with which we reject individuals and whole peoples.

Note

1. Oblomov is a young, generous nobleman who seems incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant actions. Throughout the novel, he rarely leaves his room and famously fails to leave his bed for the first 150 pages of the novel of the same name The book was considered a satire of Russian nobility whose social and economic function was increasingly in question in mid-nineteenth-century Russia.

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland.
Mythologies
. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.

Goncharov, Ivan.
Oblomov
. Trans. David Magarshack. London: Penguin Books, 1996.

Lee, Harper.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
1960. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.

Katie Rose Guest Pryal

Early in Harper Lee's 1960 novel
To Kill a Mockingbird
, Atticus Finch gives his daughter Scout some advice, advice that frames the entire story: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (
TKAM
33). Because racial conflict plays a central role in
Mockingbird
, this advice to try on another's “skin” takes on great significance. Arguably, the jurors convict the innocent black man, Tom Robinson, for the rape of the white Mayella Ewell because they refuse to walk around in a black person's skin. Thus they fail to follow Atticus's admonition to practice empathy. Indeed, scholars often point to empathy as the central theme of the novel. For example, Mary Ellen Maatman suggests that
Mockingbird
“emphasizes the significance of empathy in moral development” (210–11). Still other scholars point to Atticus as the model of an empathetic character. Robin Winter writes that Finch possesses “the unwavering powers of courage, empathy, and moral fortitude to fight against racial prejudice” (548), while Maatman suggests that “Atticus Finch repeatedly emphasizes the importance of empathy for others” (211). But this praise of Atticus—and of the novel—is not universal among its readers.

Indeed, respondents have critiqued both the character Atticus and
Mockingbird
itself for a lack of empathetic qualities. Most recently, author Malcolm Gladwell addressed this point in the August 2009 issue of the
New Yorker
. According to Gladwell, Atticus does not take on Tom Robinson's case because he empathizes with the plight of black people in Alabama; rather, Gladwell argues, Finch practices “old-style Southern liberalism” that was “gradual and paternalistic” (para. 7). He goes on to argue that Finch refuses to “look at the problem of racism outside of the immediate context” of his friends and neighbors in Maycomb (para. 15), and that Atticus was not a civil rights worker at all, despite how he has been cast in America's popular imagination. For Gladwell, Atticus takes a “hearts-and-minds approach” to Tom's rape charge, and this approach Gladwell considers to be basically “accommodation, not reform” (para. 13). As his essay continues, Gladwell calls Atticus to task for not fighting against the injustice of Tom's conviction and for failing to mount an appeal in Tom's defense. Drawing a connection with Charles Dickens, Gladwell demonstrates how Lee's portrayal of Atticus (and perhaps even the novel itself) suggests that systemic injustices in the legal system “could be tamed through small moments of justice” and through “changing hearts” (para. 27). By contending that Atticus has no desire to “endanger the status quo” (para. 27), Gladwell reveals that while Atticus might have felt sympathy for Tom and the other black people of Maycomb, he does not practice the empathy that so many associate with the novel's thematic emphasis.

Empathy—how it is discussed and deployed by both the characters in
Mockingbird
and by the author, Lee—is a useful lens to view the depictions of racial injustice in
Mockingbird
, because empathy is the moral fulcrum on which the narrative turns. In fact, each moment of tension in the book is driven by attempts to practice empathy: Jem's relationship with the dying Mrs. Dubose, the late-night confrontation at the jail in which Scout forces the group to empathize with Atticus (if not with Tom), and even the moment when Atticus shoots the rabid dog and mourns the passing of the sick animal. In particular, empathy across racial lines poses a challenge to the judge and jury in Tom's case. The scenes in and around the courtroom best reveal the power that empathy holds over us as individuals and as a society. All citizens implicitly endorse our legal system and believe that it acts on our behalf. Since this system sends some individuals to prison and others to their death, it follows that we must take responsibility for these punishments. Developing this sense of responsibility, I believe, is a central message of Lee's novel.

In this essay, I argue that
To Kill a Mockingbird
fails to aptly demonstrate the practice of cross-racial empathy. As a consequence, readers cannot empathize with the (largely silent) black characters of the novel. In order to examine the concept of empathy, I have developed a critical framework derived from Kenneth Burke's theory of identification and then used this framework to examine some ways in which empathy manifests itself in our legal system, manifestations that help reveal the failings of
Mockingbird
. Three scenes from Lee's novel are relevant—the standoff at the jail, the trial of Tom Robinson, and the Finch children's trip to Calpurnia's church—to ask whether Lee's novel successfully persuades its audience to practice cross-racial empathy, to “walk in another's skin.” Although I ultimately conclude that
Mockingbird
fails in this task, there is at least one moment in the text that offers the potential to build a bridge of cross-racial empathy.

Defining Empathy

The disagreement among scholars over whether
Mockingbird
demonstrates empathy arises, at least in part, from the lack of an agreed-upon understanding of the term. “Empathy,” as defined by the
Oxford English Dictionary
, is “the power of projecting one's personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation” (“Empathy”). This definition aligns with the metaphor Atticus uses in his advice to Scout, to place one's mind inside the skin of another. Practicing empathy, however, is a risky endeavor for both the empathizers and the objects of empathy. The empathizers must leave themselves and inhabit, if only briefly, the skin (body, life) of the objects. The objects, in turn, must allow this projection to occur, opening themselves to a kind of invasion. For example, for a jury member sitting in a criminal trial, especially a trial of a violent crime, empathizing with a defendant might mean stepping inside the mind of a monster, a terrifying prospect.

Another type of fear might prevent jurors from empathizing with a defendant, especially in a trial like the one in
Mockingbird
. White jurors might fear that viewing the world—and themselves—from a black defendant's point of view will reveal ugly characteristics about themselves that the jurors would rather ignore, unwilling to face what I will call a “fear of revelation.” The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed the problem of the all-white jury as recently as 1985 and lower courts even more recently. Given this context, fear of revelation and cross-racial empathy in the courtroom are important subjects of scrutiny. Just as fear of revelation stifles the possibility of empathy between white jurors and black defendants, it also plagues
Mockingbird
's efforts to inspire cross-racial empathy in its readers. Rarely do the black characters in the novel express how they feel about Maycomb's culture of white supremacy; nor do white citizens express interest in hearing about these feelings. This disinterest, mingled with fear, ultimately stands in the way of cross-racial empathy.

Often, “empathy” is confused with “sympathy.” Empathy entails the desire and ability to understand the plight of another person
from that person's point of view
. Sympathy does not require employing another's perspective. To practice sympathy only requires the feeling of pity for another's plight. It requires none of the projection required by empathy and therefore creates none of the psychic risk. In
Mockingbird
, Atticus suggests that we should empathize with others, but what he most often models, I suggest, is merely sympathy. For example, were Atticus to walk around in Tom's skin after Tom was found guilty, he would, as Gladwell writes, “be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict” (para. 11).

In order to understand how
Mockingbird
fails to demonstrate empathy, we need a full understanding of how empathy works in practice. I suggest that empathy is something we must
do
, not merely something we feel. In
A Rhetoric of Motives
, Kenneth Burke provides a way to think about the practice and effects of empathy. Burke's term for empathetic practice is “identification.” Identification occurs when one's “interests are joined” with another's interests (Burke 20). Even when two parties are identified, however, they retain the power of their separate selves: “In being identified with B, A is ‘substantially one' with a person other than himself. Yet at the same time he remains unique, an individual locus of motives. Thus he is both joined and separate, at once a distinct substance and consubstantial with another” (21). The practice of identification can be powerful because the parties draw from their combined strength
and
from the strength of their individual identities.

As I will show, rather than identifying—empathizing—with Tom, Atticus merely sympathizes. Worse, he subsumes Tom within his own identity when he takes on legal representation of Tom. Were Atticus to empathize, he would have to believe that what is at stake for Tom is substantially similar to what is at stake for himself were he in Tom's skin. One might question whether a white lawyer in the Jim Crow South could ever identify with a black person because black people and white people were in substantially different positions in the eyes of the law. For example, Mayella Ewell would never have been able to bring such empty charges of rape against Atticus for reasons of both class and race. Similarly, within the confines of the novel, it is nearly inconceivable that Atticus could ever encounter a situation where he would stand in a position substantially similar to that of Tom. At its best moments,
Mockingbird
raises these kinds of questions about the roles of lawyers and judges. Can a lawyer identify with his client? Should he? Can a judge identify with the parties to a case? Should she?

Empathy and Our Legal System

In order to answer these questions, we must explore what role empathy plays in the delivery of justice in the United States. An examination of two moments of legal debate in which empathy came to the fore will be helpful in developing a framework for examining the practice of empathy in
Mockingbird
.

The first instance of empathy in law that will be examined occurred in the Supreme Court race discrimination case
McCleskey v. Kemp
(1987). In his dissenting opinion in
McCleskey
, Justice William Brennan attempted to describe the role that empathy should play in criminal sentencing, particularly death penalty sentencing.
1
Justice Brennan suggested that a lack of cross-racial empathy enables the majority of U.S. society to endorse capital punishment despite the proven existence of racism in capital sentencing.
2
After declaring that capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment, Brennan writes,

It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is ultimately corrosive, for the reverberations of injustice are not so easily confined . . . the way in which we choose those who will die reveals the depth of moral commitment among the living. (McCleskey 345)

Justice Brennan chastised those who ignore the suffering of black death row inmates such as Warren McCleskey because of an unwillingness to see any human connection with them. Justice Brennan implied that this unwillingness to connect—to empathize—is a willful blindness, a “pretending.” One might suggest further that this blindness is driven by fear: fear that our safe position of superiority might crumble if we recognize the agonistic humanity of the supposed monster before us. This is a prime example of a fear of revelation: we would rather ignore the accused than view ourselves through his eyes. Justice Brennan's words remind us that our fates are indeed tied to those of inmates on death row; we are interconnected despite our reluctance to admit it.

Brennan's words might have been directed at the very jurors that convicted Tom Robinson in
Mockingbird
: “It is tempting to pretend that minorities [who are criminal defendants] share a fate in no way connected to our own.” But this argument for empathy, for interconnection, is not the argument Atticus makes. He does not suggest that the lives of the jurors have anything to do with the life of Tom Robinson. Instead, he suggests that (1) the Ewells are untrustworthy; (2) that Tom is “honest”; and (3) that the courts are the only “human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller” (
TKAM
233) and, by implication, a black man the equal of a white man. Instead of evoking empathy and compassion, Atticus tells the jury that he is “confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard” (233). He appeals to reason and logic rather than emotion, fearing that emotion will lead to a conviction. Perhaps Atticus's strategy would be the most likely and the most effective one for earning an acquittal in a case like Tom's. Be that as it may, however, it was not a strategy driven by empathy.

The second instance of empathy in law occurred more recently, upon the retirement of Supreme Court Justice William Souter in April 2009. After Souter announced that he would be leaving the Court, President Obama described how he would select his Supreme Court nominee. Obama's speech has spawned what pundits called “the empathy standard” (Brown para. 1). Obama declared, “I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives—whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation” (Obama para. 5). For Obama, empathy means recognizing how the abstract rules of law affect particular people and adjusting those rules to reach a just outcome. Obama's critics suggest that judges who practice empathy may deliver judicial decisions contrary to law.