I re-read “To Kill a Mockingbird” this weekend. I felt I had to. Its author, Harper Lee, died Friday and reading her classic novel again seemed the best way to honor her.
Lee was an intensely private person who shunned interviews. So what we know of her, we’ve learned from other who knew her. And from the words she put to paper.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” may well be my favorite novel. It has richly developed characters, a strong storyline that is at times tense, at time endearing. Lee uses its Southern setting of Maycomb, Ala., to take a bold look a race, particularly considering it was first published in 1960.
I think “Mockingbird” holds a special place for people like me who grew up in very Maycomb-like towns. I can relate to Scout. I understand her questions. Like Scout, I needed to hear Atticus’ explanation in Chapter 3.
“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.”
In many ways, “Mockingbird” is two, distinct stories. There were the summer days of Scout, Jem and Dill, playing hide-and-seek and trying to sneak a peek at Boo Radley. The imaginations of the children became legendary from summer to summer. (Jem on Mrs. Dubose: “She’s got a Confederate gun under that shawl, and she’ll kill you as quick as look at you.”)
I grew up in the South more than 40 years after the setting of “Mockingbird.” But those summer days always connected with me. As I child, my friend Andy and I built forts in the woods near our houses and rode our bikes to the Suwannee Swifty convenience store to buy candy and drinks. Like Scout and Jem, we didn’t have to go in at night until our parents walked outside and yelled for us.
It was a wonderful time to grow up, and these are the kinds of memories I flash back to when I remember my childhood.
The other part of “Mockingbird” is more difficult to grasp. It’s the part that deals with racial inequality and the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly charged with raping a white woman.
Race in the South has always been a complicated issue. Was in Harper Lee’s world of 1930s Maycomb. Was when I was a child in Southwest Georgia in the 1970s. And still is in so many ways.
As a child, I was barely aware of the issues surrounding race. My first grade year was the first year Early County schools were integrated. There were concerns, I learned years later, that there might be problems. But like Scout, I didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense.
The discovery last year of “Go Set a Watchman” changed the dynamic of “Mockingbird” for some. Set years after “Mockingbird,” the books describes an adult Scout’s visit to Maycomb where she discovers her father has changed. He’s angry, and he even attended a Klan meeting.
But the question I had was had Atticus really changed? Or had Scout’s? She’s now an adult. She sees things differently, feels things differently, understands things differently
Maybe the answer is that we should all be more like young Scout and climb into another person’s skin before we judge each other.
Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson we should take from Harper Lee, and it’s a fitting epitaph.
