A beautiful June morning: 73ºF/ 23ºC is the perfect temperature, I'd say, and that's what we have. Partly cloudy with a light breeze.
(That's my Auntie Vi Memorial Weather Report.)
Sweet
I’m still coughing, but feeling chipper. I went to work yesterday and everyone gratifyingly said my voice sounded awful. I wore a mask, but managers were happy to suggest I go home early. I did, feeling ragged. Worth it, going in though--as I'd hoped, it normalized relations after a sour staff meeting last Friday.
I'm in that sweet spot where you’re well enough to enjoy a sick day, and I’m staying home today—cleaning up my place, doing laundry and the like.
First, this morning I'm sitting outside at the deli/butcher shop on the corner of my block. Blogging on my phone (not my favorite). I'd never come here for coffee before. Everything on this corner is expensive by my standards, and this artisanal place is no exception—coffee and a pecan roll were $9.50.
Squinting into the sun:
Signs at the cash register alert
you to a 10% surcharge on everything, “to provide workers health
insurance”.
Businesses started doing this during Covid, but usually more like 4%. I think at this point this is bad business practice—psychologically off-putting. Just raise your prices and be done with it!
Sour & Complicated
Businesses started doing this during Covid, but usually more like 4%. I think at this point this is bad business practice—psychologically off-putting. Just raise your prices and be done with it!
Sour & Complicated
Well... To Kill a Mockingbird (TKM) went sour on me when race is finally discussed outright around page 80. It's a threatening shadow from the very start though. The narrator––the grown up Scout/author Harper Lee––looking back at her childhood town in Alabama describes the white people using the term "people" alone.
Black people are not "people"--they are “colored folks” or “Negroes”. The little girl Scout and her schoolmates calls them "niggers", but she is chastised by her father, Atticus, for it. "That's common," he tells her. Not, "that's wrong thinking" but rather, "that makes you sounds trashy, not genteel".
Class is a big deal in this book, and tangled up with race. Even the trashiest low-class white people such as the Ewells, who Atticus says "live like animals" he calls Mister and Miss. Even white children are called Miss or Mister. Scout is Miss Jean Louise. None of the Black people are so called.
Much is made of family names. White people are named in full--Dill is Charles Baker Harris.
We are never told the full name of Calpurnia––the Black woman who is raising Scout and Jem. She is a central character--Scout calls her "our cook", Cal. Once in an emergency, when Calpurnia goes to a neighbor's front door, Scout comments, "She's supposed to go around in back."
There's lots of this throughout, taken as a given, and it's jarring.
Black people are not "people"--they are “colored folks” or “Negroes”. The little girl Scout and her schoolmates calls them "niggers", but she is chastised by her father, Atticus, for it. "That's common," he tells her. Not, "that's wrong thinking" but rather, "that makes you sounds trashy, not genteel".
Class is a big deal in this book, and tangled up with race. Even the trashiest low-class white people such as the Ewells, who Atticus says "live like animals" he calls Mister and Miss. Even white children are called Miss or Mister. Scout is Miss Jean Louise. None of the Black people are so called.
Much is made of family names. White people are named in full--Dill is Charles Baker Harris.
We are never told the full name of Calpurnia––the Black woman who is raising Scout and Jem. She is a central character--Scout calls her "our cook", Cal. Once in an emergency, when Calpurnia goes to a neighbor's front door, Scout comments, "She's supposed to go around in back."
There's lots of this throughout, taken as a given, and it's jarring.
I'm trying not to be reactive, but it's kind of a horrific read.
I cringe, for instance, when 8-year-old Scout chastises Calpurnia, who is older than Atticus, for how she talks to other Black people at her church:
"Cal, why do you talk nigger-talk to the––to your people when you know it's not right?"
It's a really meaty story--seeing a society from the unquestioning eyes of a child (the narrator doesn't step in much, though of course she's crafting the whole thing). If I were a teacher, I would teach this book as an exercise in critical thinking, to gain insight into the way the world works. It's like the opposite of my complaints about Matrix, in which a modern pov is interjected into a medieval human. TKM is from inside its time.
That's valuable. But I can't imagine recommending TKM as a fun read or a heroic tale, which is how I thought of it growing up.
I wonder now how much the movie influenced how I read the book. A lot, I think. If I didn't picture Atticus as the flawless Gregory Peck, would I have been more critical of him all along?
Probably.
Now I would be embarrassed to present Atticus as exemplary.
I think of how the book would appear to my Black coworkers, like Supershopper Louise (who shares Scout's middle name). Only a few years older than me, she grew up in Mississippi . She is outspoken, and when she was young, her mother (who worked cleaning white people's houses, akin to Calpurnia) told her she'd better leave the South or she "wouldn't make it".
I cringe, for instance, when 8-year-old Scout chastises Calpurnia, who is older than Atticus, for how she talks to other Black people at her church:
"Cal, why do you talk nigger-talk to the––to your people when you know it's not right?"
It's a really meaty story--seeing a society from the unquestioning eyes of a child (the narrator doesn't step in much, though of course she's crafting the whole thing). If I were a teacher, I would teach this book as an exercise in critical thinking, to gain insight into the way the world works. It's like the opposite of my complaints about Matrix, in which a modern pov is interjected into a medieval human. TKM is from inside its time.
That's valuable. But I can't imagine recommending TKM as a fun read or a heroic tale, which is how I thought of it growing up.
I wonder now how much the movie influenced how I read the book. A lot, I think. If I didn't picture Atticus as the flawless Gregory Peck, would I have been more critical of him all along?
Probably.
Now I would be embarrassed to present Atticus as exemplary.
I think of how the book would appear to my Black coworkers, like Supershopper Louise (who shares Scout's middle name). Only a few years older than me, she grew up in Mississippi . She is outspoken, and when she was young, her mother (who worked cleaning white people's houses, akin to Calpurnia) told her she'd better leave the South or she "wouldn't make it".
You know, it's just an entirely different story, seen from her pov. Or from the pov of Tom Robinson or his surviving family. He had three children--what happened to them after the police shot him dead?
There'd be a story.
There'd be a story.
I was thinking of reading Go Set a Watchman next, having heard that it shows Atticus's racism overtly. I still might, but having read even only a third of TKM, I don't feel I have to--Mockingbird shows it perfectly clearly.
Yes, Atticus bravely takes on Tom Robinson's case, to the disapproval of his fellow white townspeople. But it's an INDIVIDUAL choice, he explains to Scout, taken to satisfy his own conscience as a lawyer.
It slowly occurs to me that first and foremost, Atticus is defending THE LAW: it should be impartial--no one should be above it.
Now, that's a good thing! Checks and balances and the Rule of Law are bulwarks against high emotion, which can run amok in all directions.
Standing up for the law is heroic.
But it's limited too. Because Atticus has no legal power in the matter, he never challenges Mr Radley's imprisonment of Arthur/Boo his son (and, it's implied, of his wife).
Folks have the right to live the way they choose, Atticus says: "Let the Radleys mind their [business], they had a right to."
But Boo didn't have a choice, he was a child.
And Black people haven't chosen their social placement. So, the championing of individual choice is a weak argument there.
Who gets to choose?
Who gets a last name?
I wonder if Atticus isn't like those people throughout history who explain their actions by saying they were following orders, following the law as the highest good?
The old Antigone problem.
Anyway––contrary to my memory––in no way does Atticus intend to challenge the racial norms of his own community. He is a defender of the status quo. As a lawyer, he bravely steps up to "help that man". However, of the white townsfolk who call his children "nigger lovers", Atticus says they are "entitled to full respect for their opinions" [bf mine]. Even when their opinions are that Tom Robinson "should swing from the water tower"?
Yes, Atticus bravely takes on Tom Robinson's case, to the disapproval of his fellow white townspeople. But it's an INDIVIDUAL choice, he explains to Scout, taken to satisfy his own conscience as a lawyer.
It slowly occurs to me that first and foremost, Atticus is defending THE LAW: it should be impartial--no one should be above it.
Now, that's a good thing! Checks and balances and the Rule of Law are bulwarks against high emotion, which can run amok in all directions.
Standing up for the law is heroic.
But it's limited too. Because Atticus has no legal power in the matter, he never challenges Mr Radley's imprisonment of Arthur/Boo his son (and, it's implied, of his wife).
Folks have the right to live the way they choose, Atticus says: "Let the Radleys mind their [business], they had a right to."
But Boo didn't have a choice, he was a child.
And Black people haven't chosen their social placement. So, the championing of individual choice is a weak argument there.
Who gets to choose?
Who gets a last name?
I wonder if Atticus isn't like those people throughout history who explain their actions by saying they were following orders, following the law as the highest good?
The old Antigone problem.
Anyway––contrary to my memory––in no way does Atticus intend to challenge the racial norms of his own community. He is a defender of the status quo. As a lawyer, he bravely steps up to "help that man". However, of the white townsfolk who call his children "nigger lovers", Atticus says they are "entitled to full respect for their opinions" [bf mine]. Even when their opinions are that Tom Robinson "should swing from the water tower"?
Okay, but backing up, I stop to think, what's Atticus's context? Not to excuse him but to understand him.
He's "almost fifty" in 1934, which means he was born in Alabama around 1885, twenty years after the South lost the Civil War.
(I'd forgotten it's that early -- the b&w movie makes it seem like it's the 1950s, which it could be. But seeing Atticus as a product of postbellum South is helpful.)
His family were slave owners--a Methodist ancestor having "forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels". The war left the family "stripped of everything but their land".
(What was John Wesley's dictum on human chattels that Harper Lee is referring to?
In his pamphlet Thoughts upon Slavery (1784), "Wesley denies that slavery is necessary to support the colonial economies, pointing out that no benefit is worth any injustice made to receive it. "
He's "almost fifty" in 1934, which means he was born in Alabama around 1885, twenty years after the South lost the Civil War.
(I'd forgotten it's that early -- the b&w movie makes it seem like it's the 1950s, which it could be. But seeing Atticus as a product of postbellum South is helpful.)
His family were slave owners--a Methodist ancestor having "forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels". The war left the family "stripped of everything but their land".
(What was John Wesley's dictum on human chattels that Harper Lee is referring to?
In his pamphlet Thoughts upon Slavery (1784), "Wesley denies that slavery is necessary to support the colonial economies, pointing out that no benefit is worth any injustice made to receive it. "
--via UNC)
Atticus married late, and his much younger wife died suddenly of a heart attack four years before the book starts (Scout was two), leaving him with two young children.
So. I'm thinking that Atticus has survived a lot of loss and chaos, both personal and societal, and he is trying to hold the line, to support something that anchors society, and himself--the law.
And in this one legal case, the sort he says he'd hoped he'd never have, he has to risk a lot, including his children's happiness--and, as it turns out, even their very lives.
And he does.
So.
It's a hard book to read, but I think if I STOP being angry that Atticus is not the uncomplicated hero I remembered/wanted him to be, it's an interesting and recognizable story about the challenges of trying to live upright in a topsy-turvy world. And an amazing, unvarnished portrait of a society and its peculiar injustices in a particular time in history.
One that links up directly with here and now.
Atticus married late, and his much younger wife died suddenly of a heart attack four years before the book starts (Scout was two), leaving him with two young children.
So. I'm thinking that Atticus has survived a lot of loss and chaos, both personal and societal, and he is trying to hold the line, to support something that anchors society, and himself--the law.
And in this one legal case, the sort he says he'd hoped he'd never have, he has to risk a lot, including his children's happiness--and, as it turns out, even their very lives.
And he does.
So.
It's a hard book to read, but I think if I STOP being angry that Atticus is not the uncomplicated hero I remembered/wanted him to be, it's an interesting and recognizable story about the challenges of trying to live upright in a topsy-turvy world. And an amazing, unvarnished portrait of a society and its peculiar injustices in a particular time in history.
One that links up directly with here and now.
So, where does that leave me?
As always, challenged to try to look at MY life and times with clear eyes. (It's easy to criticize Atticus, but what am I doing?)
As always, challenged to try to look at MY life and times with clear eyes. (It's easy to criticize Atticus, but what am I doing?)
And, having hashed it out so far, determined to finish reading To Kill a Mockingbird. It's sort of gross, so I wasn't sure I could, but I will.
I think next I should reread Gone with the Wind! Would it be the death of me?
I think next I should reread Gone with the Wind! Would it be the death of me?
_____________
A couple articles that gave me some perspective:
A couple articles that gave me some perspective:
"Go Set a Watchman: Why Harper Lee's new book is so controversial", by Dara Lind, Vox, 2015.
"White People Need to Reckon With Atticus Finch’s Racism" by Sandra Schmuhl Long, Electric Lit, 2020.
I think that, with the very first sentence of the book (Scout referring to the time the story is set as "the year my brother broke his arm"), Harper Lee issues a warning to the readers, that Scout, although being a generally reliable narrator, may be affected on some subjects by what's called a "tunnel vision" (I believe: I just learned about the saying "tunnel vision" some days ago when reading the world news!).
ReplyDeleteLoved this quote from John Oliver, in your linked Watchman article, “The less you know about history, the easier it is to imagine you’d always be on the right side of it.” That’s probably how Mockingbird should be read and dissected, as a time capsule for comparing racist then with racist now
ReplyDeleteI can't tell you how many little girls in the south are named Harper now. It is all so complicated. "For its time" TKM was rather sensational, of course, but everything you say about it is true. Atticus is no saint. There are no saviors in the book.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Did it open some people's eyes to certain horrible inequities? Yes it did and in that, there can be praise.
I'm pretty sure that reading GWTW would indeed do you in.
TORORO: Good point, Jem's broken arm bookends the story--and yes, it's Scout's perspective, and she's all of six when it starts and eight when it ends--the age of the girlettes!
ReplyDeleteBINK: Yes! That's so important! To see through the illusion that evil will look like/be done by a Nazi in Indiana Jones, not like the folks in our daily lives (or even, maybe by acts of omission, ourselves).
MS MOON: I definitely need a break before trying GWTW! Another complicated story--Scarlett IS a kick-ass hero, and I appreciate her--but she's a lot like Donald Trump.
One of the articles I linked to mentions that Atticus is a popular name too.