Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (4 page)

Atticus's empathetic nature stands above all others, and this genuinely honest and humanitarian aspect actually works to his disadvantage at times. . . . Atticus even tries to understand Bob Ewell after being spit upon: “Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell's shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility. So, if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one beating, that's something I'll gladly take.”

Other answers in the working sample that talk about the moral character of Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell offer a similar interpretation. One teacher, for example, contrasts Atticus' “solid principles” and unchanging “sense of morality” with the “despicable” and “evil” nature of the other man. In their descriptions of the two characters, many of the answers outside of the working sample likewise reproduce this opposition of “the good” and “the evil,” as manifested in the two characters: Atticus Finch is “professional” and Bob Ewell is “low living,” the former “courageous” and the latter “cowardly,” the former “empathic” and the latter “hateful,” the former “defending” and the latter “threatening,” the former “not retaliate[ing]” and the latter “seek[ing] revenge,” and so forth. Eight answers outside the working sample liken Atticus Finch to the very centers or arbiters of moral values for many people today, the figure of Jesus Christ and the God of Christianity. Theoretical sampling shows no similar parallel between Bob Ewell and Satan but reveals an overwhelmingly strong pattern (in thirty-four answers, within and outside the working sample) in identifying Ewell with evil. One source outside the working sample even points out the sound similarities between Bob Ewell's last name and the word “evil.”

Two posts in the working sample challenge the widespread characterization of the Finch family, headed by Atticus Finch, as good and the Ewell family, headed by Bob Ewell, as evil. The student posted a question that included the characterization of the Ewell daughter as “disgusting” (i.e., “Why is the Ewell daughter both pathetic and disgusting?”) and the teacher, in replying to that question, challenged the characterization (i.e., “I don't agree at all that she's disgusting. Instead, I have strong sympathy for the character”). A second teacher's answer perceives Atticus' treatment of the Ewells to reveal a flaw, not a virtue, of his character:

Atticus' view of Bob Ewell is perhaps the only chink in his armor. We are supposed to like Atticus; he's the moral center of the story, and is a sympathetic and likeable character. However, he does refer to Bob Ewell as “trash,” and while his characterization may be accurate, it does not sound like a statement from a man who is supposed to be so tolerant and compassionate. However, one could also argue that Atticus has sympathy for those who he feels deserve it, like Mayella, but not for those who do not, like Bob.

A theoretical sampling of the full collection of answers has failed to locate further instances of challenges to the dominant view of Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell as embodiments of good and evil.

Life Lessons

When talking to students about the experiences and changes of the younger characters in the novel, particularly when talking about Scout and Jem Finch, the teachers frequently move in their answers toward explicit and implicit discussions of influence, identity development, intellectual and social development, loss of innocence, growing awareness of hypocrisy and evil in the world, and other topics related to adolescence. The teachers' emphasis on education and the development of youth in the novel is understandable, given their occupations and their audiences of middle school, high school, and first-year college students.

A number of answers in the working sample explicitly address the idea of education. The longest answer discusses four main ideas of the novel, all relating to the emerging theme of Life Lessons. Even as one teacher writes that “Harper repeatedly mocks the various deficiencies in modern education,” the teacher tracks the maturation of several young people in the story through lived experiences outside of school and explains how the novel gives the reader a lesson in the importance of being tolerant and being free of prejudice. Several answers in the working sample similarly point to the hypocrisy of the schoolteachers in the novel, who do not live by their own lessons, and one answer in the working sample argues that the children's true growth occurs when they step outside of the confines of formal education: the children “are attacked by Bob Ewell [i.e., they encounter real evil] after leaving the school.” One answer in the working sample focuses more specifically on Scout's education in gender identity or performance. The teacher writes,

Because Scout is motherless, Atticus knows that she must have a feminine influence and leaves that task to several women whom he trusts. . . . From Calpurnia, Scout learns that Southern ladies are tenacious and protective . . . [and] what it means to show hospitality as a Southern woman. . . . Scout learns from [Aunt Alexandra] what it means to be a gracious lady even when people make distasteful comments in one's home . . . [and] that even the most stubborn, set-in-their-ways Southern women can change. . . . Scout learns from Miss Maudie that sometimes Southern ladies need to be bold, especially in defense of their friends and family. . . . Scout also learns from Miss Maudie that true Southern ladies don't gossip or prejudge others.

Two answers in the working sample suggest that reading the novel can itself be an educative act. One teacher writes that reading the novel gives a student the opportunity to “analyze the themes of racial intolerance and prejudice in your own life.” Another teacher writes,

Ultimately,
To Kill A Mockingbird
is the story of humanity learning to understand each other. As a reader, we see the world through the eyes of all children, who enter this world as the most pure of human beings. The realization of life's hard lessons is taught through Scout and Jem Finch as they watch their father and community struggle with the Depression, racism, and the justice system of the Old South. We see the remnants of the old stereotypes toward blacks, women, and anyone who is considered to be an “outsider” (Boo Radley). It is a great book to teach young people about how NOT to be.

The answers outside of the working sample similarly contain explicit and implicit references to learning, influence, maturation, the loss of innocence, and life lessons.

Text and Context

When talking to students about the novel's setting and publication date, the teachers frequently touch on past and present organizations of race, class, and gender. The novel's setting often receives detailed treatment in the teachers' answers, whereas the treatment of the social situation in the early 1930s and in the late 1950s is often brief and undeveloped.

No fewer than six answers in the working sample address the divisions, hierarchies, and economies within the novel's population. These answers tend to follow the promptings of the text and cluster around three scenes: Walter Cunningham's behavior on the first day of school, Walter Cunningham's behavior at the Finches' dinner table, and Jem Finch's analysis of the four classes of people in town. The working sample answers that move past a literal and text-based discussion often contain undeveloped references to Alabama in the 1930s. Atticus' kindness toward and respect for women is “typical of this era,” one teacher writes: “Atticus exemplifies the expected male treatment of women in the south in the 1930s.” Another answer contains a glancing reference to limits on behavior of a “black man . . . in the 1930s South.” A third answer contains a series of vague references to mannerisms and dress that are typical for a certain time (“this era”) and a certain place (“the area”), but neither the time nor place are specified. Part of the answer reads,

[Atticus] wears glasses, normally wears a suit and tie, and speaks nearly flawless English, as is the custom for professionals of this era. When Atticus is at home, he “dresses down” or becomes more casual, as is the standard for men of this era. Jem . . . is your average pre-teen southern boy: his dress and manner reflect the geography and culture of the area. Typically, he dresses in pants or short pants, the average shirt, and depending on the weather, he and Scout may run barefoot.

A theoretical sampling of the full set of postings shows that teachers are highly attuned to the fictional world created in the novel. One or more teachers even ask students to draw a map of the town of Maycomb based on details given throughout the novel. Theoretical sampling also shows that answers in the full set of postings in the Question & Answer section on Lee's novel are only slightly more contextualized than those in the working sample. The full set of posts contains many glancing references to the Depression, the civil rights era, and Martin Luther King but few specific references to landmarks in the struggle for African American civil rights, including no references to the Montgomery bus boycott, one reference to
Brown v. Board of Education
, one reference to the murder of Emmett Till, and three references to the rape trial of the Scottsboro boys.

The emerging tendency in the teachers' answers to explore the presentation and transmission of unchanging and universal “truths,” particularly the central idea of learning to distinguish between good and evil—coupled with the emerging tendency among the teachers' answers to discuss the novel without solid grounding in the period in which the story is set and/or the novel is first published—may have the effect of transforming the complex novel
To Kill a Mockingbird
into a simple and timeless morality tale. Such an approach runs counter to trends in critical literacy and literary theory, which seek to question, reevaluate, and contextualize a work rather than transform it into something universal and removed from the world in which it is produced, circulated, and read. The final sections of this essay define the term “critical literacy,” review the working sample of teachers' statements about Lee's novel for evidence of critical engagement with the novel and with the students to whom the answers are largely addressed, and finally draw several conclusions and make several recommendations about how teachers talk to students about
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

Defining Critical Literacy

“Critical literacy” is a recent theoretical term that is used mostly in the context of secondary education—see, for example, the cited essays by Margaret C. Hagood and by Maureen McLaughlin and Glenn De Voogd—to describe the skills needed to read any given “text” (whether it be a printed novel or television advertisement) in more ways than one and to explore how the meanings of texts are constructed. In developing critical literacy in the middle school, high school, and first-year college classroom, teachers are to guide their students past an initial decoding and comprehension of the text's surface content toward a fuller understanding of how dominant and alternate readings may be performed on a single text. Discussions of critical literacy frequently use the terms of literary theory, from “reader response” to “deconstruction,” and the goals of literary theory instruction seem to match the goals of critical literacy instruction: the student should come to understand the role played by the perceiving subject in the creation of meaning for a given text and appreciate the potential for radically diverging readings of the same text. Thus, at the risk of oversimplification, critical literacy is defined in this essay as a form of instruction in literary theory—modified, of course, for application in the middle school, high school, and first-year college classroom.

Also recent is the publication of a number of resources that may be useful to teachers wishing to explore how to integrate theoretical perspectives and critical literacy into their teaching of Lee's novel. The year 2007, for example, saw the publication of both Marie K. Smith's
Teaching Harper Lee's “To Kill a Mockingbird” from Multiple Critical Perspectives
, a resource complete with classroom activities and thus tailored specifically to the needs of the teacher, and
On Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections
, a collection of essays edited by Alice H. Petry tailored to a university-level audience or higher that is interested in reevaluations of the novel through a variety of approaches. The recent teachers' answers in the working sample and in the full collection of postings on
To Kill a Mockingbird
at eNotes.com give a sense of the extent to which such critical reevaluations of and teaching aides for Lee's novel have influenced how teachers at the middle school, high school, and first-year college level talk to students about the novel.

Looking for Critical Literacy

Many of the teachers' answers in the working sample demonstrate strong familiarity with a text-centered approach to literature that resembles New Criticism. Their answers frequently move back and forth among generalizations, brief quotations, and focused analyses of the quoted passages. For example, one teacher writes perceptively about the “strong dramatic irony” present in the scene in front of the jailhouse door:

We [the readers] know that the group of men who confront Atticus at the jail is a lynch mob that has come for Tom Robinson. Scout, however, does not understand the danger of the situation as it unfolds. When she innocently places herself in the middle of it, she sees not a group of potential murderers but a neighbor she recognizes, Walter Cunningham.

At the same time, however, many of the teachers' answers also demonstrate a reliance on pre-critical terminology, such as “essential truth,” and do not demonstrate a suspicion of “authorial intent,” a concept that is antithetical to New Critical close readings of texts. As famously stated by the New Critics W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, “[T]he design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art” Lee's biography is also not a common topic in the teachers' answers in the working sample or in the full set of answers, yet a series of text searches of the full collection show that many of the students' questions ask explicitly about the author's “intent,” “choice,” or “purpose.” These questions often sound like homework assignments given by teachers to students, and the teachers' answers in the full collection never challenge the idea of speculating on authorial intent. When it comes to incorporating more recent (post–New Critical) theoretical perspectives on literature and modeling critical engagement with the text, the teachers' answers are often less successful.