Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (32 page)

Atticus's next task is to prove that Tom could not have harmed Mayella in the ways that she claims. He implies that with his injured arm, Tom could not have beaten Mayella's face or choked her. Given the inconsistencies of the Ewells' testimony, Atticus hopes that the jury will then believe Tom's version of events: that he felt sorry for Mayella so he helped her with her chores on a regular basis (
TKAM
218); that
she
tried to seduce
him
(220); that he ran away because he was afraid he would get in trouble even though he did not do anything wrong (222). When Atticus asks Tom why he was afraid, Tom replies, “Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you'd be scared, too” (222). This testimony seems to go a long way to creating cross-racial understanding. The last line might even provoke fear of revelation in some white listeners, because it gives a small glimpse of the brutality that haunts black people in Maycomb.

Consequently, it may appear as if Atticus's closing statement does work toward rendering Tom human in the eyes of the white jury, creating a person that they can empathize with. In fact, Atticus explicitly calls Tom a human being. Closer examination of his closing statement, however, reveals that he focuses little on Tom and far more on the Ewells. In the first place, Atticus hardly mentions Tom in his closing statement. Rather, he talks about Mayella: “The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is” (
TKAM
231). She is guilty because she “broke a rigid and time-honored code of our society” when she “tempted a Negro” (231). But Tom is not an “Uncle,” he is “a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry' for a white woman” (232).

In general terms, Atticus describes the racial politics at play in this trial, arguing that the word of white folks should not win over the word of a black man simply because of race. He further suggests that a courtroom should be the one place where all people are “equal” (233). At the end of his closing statement, Atticus commands the jury, “In the name of God, do your duty. . . . In the name of God, believe him” (233–34). But, how can the jury be expected to “believe” Tom Robinson when they have no idea who he is? Neither the fictional jury nor the audience of the novel have learned anything about Tom: where he lives, what his family is like, how he treats his wife and children and others in his daily life. Instead, readers learn these things about Atticus: we get to know his house and his family and see that he treats others with respect, most of the time. The jury in Tom's trial would have known these things about Atticus, too. So, at the end of the closing statement, when Atticus tells the jury to believe Tom Robinson, he is actually commanding the jury—and readers—to believe Atticus Finch.

Atticus relies on the fact that Tom is physically damaged, with a left arm destroyed by a cotton gin; although Tom claims otherwise, the audience of the trial surely doubts whether he could have raped Mayella Ewell, even if he'd wanted to. Tom's damaged body means that he is nonthreatening: to Mayella or to any white person that may be afraid of a young black man. Atticus tries to move the jurors to pity with this emphasis on the injured arm, but not to empathy. It is curious that after impeaching the character of the Ewells, Atticus does not call a character witness on Tom's behalf. Link Deas, Tom's former employer, interrupts the trial to announce, “I just want the whole lot of you to know one thing right now. That boy's worked for me eight years an' I ain't had a speck o' trouble outa him. Not a speck” (
TKAM
222). Had Atticus wanted to create a full picture of Tom's character for the jury, he could have called Link, Tom's wife, and probably many others who would have testified that Tom was a good person. But creating a full picture of Tom was not Atticus's goal.

During the trial, Tom's life is on the line, but Atticus is the warrior. Never do they stand together as equals, fighting together for Tom's life. They are not identified with each other, to use Burke's term. Instead, Atticus subsumes Tom's identity into his own. Like he did at the jail with the mob, Atticus counts on the white jurors' respect for Atticus to save Tom from punishment. In fact, Atticus says as much after the trial, when discussing the jury selection with the children. When Atticus reveals that he put a member of Tom's lynch mob, one of the Cunningham clan, on the jury, Scout describes her father's explanation for such an action: “He said the other thing about [the Cunninghams] was, once you earned their respect they were for you tooth and nail. Atticus said he had a feeling . . . that they left the jail that night with considerable respect for the Finches” (
TKAM
254). This detail suggests that, for Atticus, whether the jurors felt respect for Tom was irrelevant.

Unlike during the standoff with the lynch mob, Atticus's strategy of relying on respect for himself does not work at trial. The white jurors do not overcome differences in skin color to see Tom as a courteous and honest man—to see him the way in which they see Atticus. For the jurors, Tom is a cipher: faceless, even mindless. Atticus's dilemma is one faced by many defense attorneys: how to craft the persona of a criminal defendant so that he can garner a jury's empathy. In this task, Atticus fails.

The Voice of Lula

There is one notable scene in
To Kill a Mockingbird
in which the novel risks revelation, creating a moment of cross-racial empathy. This moment of revelation occurs about halfway through the novel, long before the lynch mob comes to the jail. One Sunday morning, Atticus has been called to an emergency meeting of the state legislature. In order to avoid leaving the children alone, Calpurnia, the Finches' black housekeeper, invites Scout and Jem to come to church with her. When they arrive at Calpurnia's all-black church, one woman, Lula, confronts them in the church yard and challenges the presence of the white children. I suggest that the complaints of Lula represent one of the few scenes in the novel that could inspire cross-racial empathy in readers.

Calpurnia brings Scout and Jem to First Purchase African M.E. Church, located “in the Quarters outside the southern town limits” (
TKAM
134). “The Quarters” is the name of a black neighborhood of Maycomb. Its name refers to the former dwellings of slaves; its location ensures that its residents do not receive town services. Once the children enter the church, Scout describes one of the most striking confrontations of the novel. When the white children first enter, “the men stepped back and took off their hats; the women crossed their arms at their waists, weekday gestures of respectful attention” (135). The black members of First Purchase thus perform the typical, “weekday” interracial behaviors dictated by white supremacy in Maycomb. But not all of the black folks in church accept the presence of the white children. Scout describes the standoff between Calpurnia and Lula, another member of First Purchase:

“What you up to, Miss Cal?” said a voice behind us.

Calpurnia's hands went to our shoulders and we stopped and looked around: standing in the path behind us was a tall Negro woman. Her weight was on one leg; she rested her left elbow in the curve of her hip, pointing at us with an upturned palm. She was bullet-headed with strange almond-shaped eyes, straight nose, and an Indian-bow mouth. She seemed seven feet high.

I felt Calpurnia's hand dig into my shoulder. “What you want, Lula?” she asked, in tones I had never heard her use. She spoke quietly, contemptuously.

“I wants to know why you bringin' white chillun to nigger church.”

“They's my comp'ny,” said Calpurnia. . . .

“Yeah, an' I reckon you's comp'ny at the Finch house durin' the week. . . . You ain't got no business bringin' white chillun here—they got their church, we got our'n. It is our church, ain't it, Miss Cal?” (
TKAM
135)

Unlike the other black members of First Purchase, who allow the presence of the Finch children to push them into a position of weekday servility, Lula rebels against their presence in what has been, up until that moment, a black space, safe from white supremacy. In this way, Lula's is one of the few voices in the novel that presents the unfiltered point of view of a black person. The discomfort Scout describes is that of revelation, upon first learning that black people do not necessarily want white people around. Just as the Finches do not treat Calpurnia as “company” when she comes to work during the week, Lula does not want to treat the Finch children as company at First Purchase. She is angry that white people have invaded the church sanctuary, which had also functioned as a metaphorical sanctuary from white regulations of black behavior.

The novel cuts short the empathetic possibilities of this confrontation, however. The power of Lula's observations are limited by the voices of Calpurnia and her son, Zeebo, whom Scout recognizes as the garbage collector. After Lula departs, Zeebo says, “Mister Jem . . . we're mighty glad to have you all here. Don't pay no 'tention to Lula. . . . She's a troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an' haughty ways—we're mighty glad to have you all” (
TKAM
136). Zeebo discredits Lula's truth-telling as mere troublemaking. And, indeed, he is correct—Lula's words do create trouble, a conflict between the white children and the black people of the church. Although Zeebo's words are meant to reassure that the black members are “glad to have you all here,” Lula's words cannot be unspoken. Scout—and the readers of
Mockingbird
—now know that there are black spaces in which white people are not welcome.

Underlying Lula's words is the implication that
all
demonstrations of black respect, such as the crossed arms and tipped hats of the other members of First Purchase, are performed only because white regulations require it. Lula's challenge to Scout and Jem has the potential to shock white readers into a position of cross-racial empathy in which they must wonder what exactly black people think of white people, and, by implication, what it is like to be a black person in our society. Unfortunately, by reassuring us that Lula is simply a disgruntled outlier rather than a prophet, Zeebo weakens the effects of the shock of Lula's words.

Conclusion

To Kill a Mockingbird
, rather than creating empathy between readers and the victims of racial injustice, creates emotional distance. Readers of
Mockingbird
can point to the 1930s setting and claim that the novel represents the “bad old days.” They might also speculate that, had they been around back then, they would be like Atticus. In addition,
Mockingbird
establishes faith in the contemporary U.S. justice system—even the justice system of the 1960s when the book was released—because the novel suggests that the system has changed. For example, 1960s readers could argue that
Brown v. Board of
Education
(1954) represents great progress made against racism since the
time of
Mockingbird
. After all, Scout Finch attends an all-white school, and school segregation is over now. Furthermore, most white people, do not (any longer) resemble the racist “bad guys” of the story—the lynch mob and Bob Ewell.

In the end, readers of
Mockingbird
can read comfortably because the novel does not disturb America's racial caste system. The defendant Tom Robinson is still a “Negro,” in Atticus's words; furthermore, by the end of the novel, he is dead. Readers are not forced to empathize with Tom; they need only empathize with Atticus. Unfortunately, despite moments of cross-racial revelation such as the confrontation with Lula, in the end, Lee's novel does not force white readers to overcome their fear of revelation. Instead,
To Kill a Mockingbird
allows them to resist empathizing with Tom, the black townspeople of Maycomb, and in Justice Brennan's words, “those who will die” on death row because of race.

Notes

1. In
McCleskey v. Kemp
, the Supreme Court held that, despite rock-solid evidence that race plays a major role in deciding whether a murderer is sentenced to death (rather than life in prison), capital punishment does not violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

2. Recent polls show that Americans give popular support to the death penalty. According to a 2008 poll, the “Harris Poll,” 63 percent of Americans supported capital punishment (PollingReport.com).

3. Reichman writes in the context of “law and literature,” a field of interdisciplinary study that some scholars, like Reichman, suggest can create more empathetic lawyers and judges.

Works Cited

Brown.
Brown v. Board of Education
. 347 U.S. 483. Supreme Court of the United States, 1954.

Brown, Carrie Budoff. “Jeff Sessions Takes Aim at ‘Empathy Standard.'” Politico.com, 6 Jun 2009. Web. 2 November 2009.

Burke, Kenneth.
A Rhetoric of Motives
. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.

“Empathy.”
Oxford English Dictionary Online
. New York: Oxford U P. Web. 23 November 2009.

Fish, Stanley. “Empathy and the Law.”
New York Times: Stanley Fish Blog
, 24 May 2009. Web. 17 October 2009.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and Southern Liberalism.”
The New Yorker
, 10 August 2009. Web. 15 October 2009.

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

Maatman, Mary Ellen. “Justice Formation from Generation to Generation: Atticus Finch and the Stories Lawyers Tell Their Children.”
Legal Writing: The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute
14.1 (2008): 207–48.