"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."
Some novels are truly timeless. Despite when they were published or in what setting they take place, they remain just as a highly regarded today as when they were first released. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books, and while it was entirely a coincidence that it happened to be the book that matched the first state in an alphabetical list, and therefore the first book to read for this challenge, I can't think of a more fitting way to begin a lengthy list of novels.
First published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird would be Lee's only published work for the majority of her life, up to the release of a newly discovered manuscript for a "prequel" novel called Go Set a Watchman in 2015. Depending on who you ask, this latter book doesn't count as one of her works; there's a solid case to be argued that the manuscript was published by money-hungry agents with dubious intentions, possibly without Lee's knowledge given her poor physical and mental health.
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in fictional Maycomb, Alabama, a quiet little town grappling through the midst of the Great Depression. The story follows the Finch family, made up of the narrator, Jean Louise (known as Scout), her brother Jeremy (known as Jem), and their father Atticus, a prominent lawyer and state legislator. Scout and Jem experience the typical things young kids their age experience: both meet a new friend who comes to visit them during the summers, Scout struggles to adjust to a structured schooling environment managed by an inexperienced teacher, and Jem has to deal with an annoying sister who doesn't understand that he has better things to do than play with her. But the two also encounter multiple instances that challenge their childhood innocence, namely the racial strife that rocks the town and causes an ugly side of human nature to present itself.
The main conflict of the book revolves around the prosecution of an African American man named Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping of a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Atticus is named as Tom's defense attorney, making him the target of racially driven animosity. This is hard on Scout and especially on Jem, who up to this point has never experienced the hatred his family has received nor the systemic biases that African Americans faced in the early 20th century Deep South. At one point, we see that Atticus finds the ordeal difficult in more ways than one when he tries to comfort an upset Jem.
“There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible.”
Where To Kill a Mockingbird stands out, in my opinion, is that Lee is able to tie what look to be small, inconsequential subplots to the overall theme of innocence lost. Both Scout and Jem are forced to confront uncomfortable situations that neither had to experience before. For Scout, this includes her aunt's efforts to transform her from a tomboy to a young lady, hearing about the sexist behavior towards her older neighbor and friend Maudie Atkinson, and the slow realization that her friend Dill is sent from relative to relative due to being unwanted. Jem, as punishment for vandalism, is made by Atticus to read to an old and cantankerous old woman named Mrs. Dubose. When it's revealed that Mrs. Dubose had been a longtime morphine addict and had managed to get clean before passing, Atticus explains the reason for making Jem witness her slow demise:
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."
Scout receives her fair share of advice as well, particularly in regards to being a young woman. Maudie Atkinson provides a female counterpart to Scout as Atticus does to Jem, providing moral clarity to racial and other social issues. She's a woman who enjoys gardening, which causes her to get accosted by what she refers to as "foot-washing Baptists" who believe her partaking in pleasureful activities is a sin. Early in the book she gives some foresight to how the white people in the town will approach Tom Robinson's trial:
"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."
And yet, despite all of these events that turned their worlds upside down, there is still so much optimism that the characters have for the world. Atticus shows his children that there are still good people in the world, those with integrity and a strong moral compass. The Ewells lose their credibility after the Tom Robinson trial, peaking when the patriarch is killed after trying to harm Scout. Atticus stays up all night to watch over his children, which is where the novel ends.
I've read To Kill a Mockingbird three times now, I believe. The first time I read it was in the 8th grade, when, truth be told, I think is too soon for kids to fully grasp the themes of the book. We would have been about the same age as Jem, but unless you experience the world in the way that he does, what can you really take away from the book? At that time I was still a relatively sheltered kid whose biggest concern was peer pressure and wanting to know how well I would adjust to high school. I never had to deal with someone hating my father because I was never in the same places he was. I read the book again in high school on my own free time, but I can't say I gained too much more from it that second time, either.
Now that I'm older, this book means so much more than it did all of those years ago. Meeting new people who have had their own personal experiences with racial prejudice, along with reading reports on the news about people wrongly accused and scapegoated fr the color of their skin or some other reason they can't control, has made the book far more impactful. It made me think back to my own moments of piecing together that the world isn't what I though it was. And yet, despite this, there are still close friends and family that make the world a great place.
Fortunately, to my knowledge, my father also has no enemies.
