To Kill, To Kill a Mockingbird? | It’s Lit

One of the trademark texts of the American school system is Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. For decades it has been widely read in high schools and middle schools as a key anti-racist text. But how did this novel, with its Southern Gothic and Bildungsroman elements become a book that in 2006 the British said “every adult should read before they die” ahead of the Bible.

To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee and was loosely based on Lee’s real-life experiences, the book tells the story of Jean Louise Finch, better known as Scout, a young girl growing up during the Great Depression in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama with her older brother Jeremy aka Jem, and her widowed lawyer father, Atticus Finch. A name, that will be imprinted on the world … forever.

Hosted by Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes, It’s Lit! is a show about our favorite books, genres, and why we love to read. It’s Lit has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Hosted by: Princess Weekes
Written by: David McCracken
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[obquixote]

For the record, the implication is that Tom was "trying to escape, " _i.e._, the jailers murdered him.

[Bacopa]

Also, what about Calpurnia? This is the black character with the most coverage in the book. Calpurnia is the maid and part-time cook for the Finch family and a mother figure of sorts to Jem and Scout. She's not exactly a traditional "mammy" character. One way the movie disappointed me is that it left out a chapter where Jem and Scout spend a weekend at Calpurnia's house when Atticus has to go to Montgomery to do legal research. It was an amazing chapter and was a Calpurnia dominated chapter. Yeah, white words in a black character, but I learned things.

For instance, I was beginning to learn bass guitar at the time after a bit of background in classical piano. The scene at Calpurnia's church blew me away. I was learning the pentatonic scales and the similar blues scales derived from West African music, along with blues harmony. I never knew why blues songs had repeated lines with two different harmonies until I read this part of the book. I have to say it made learning the music easier to know how it started.

I really think this vid should have covered Calpurnia.

[meghanmcdonnell]

Unpopular opinion, I loved Go Set a Watchman. I loved the recontextualization of Atticus as what a "Sothern Gentleman" really was, how he was more in love with the law than any type of social justice. It showed TKAMB was told by a child from her perspective where her father could do no wrong, that he was idealized by both Scout and all of us to the point he wasn't a real person. And then she has to see him as an adult, as he truly is and what that means for her. I cried, to me it was so powerful. It just gave both books so much more meaning.

[iRedEarth]

When my class had finished reading the book, the teacher said she was going to bring someone in to discuss it who didn't like the book. I think that was the first time the idea that not everything deemed important is universally liked, or needs to be liked, was presented.
When the man came in I think the first thing he said after being introduced by the teacher was "the room got real quiet when you all saw me!" (He was Black).

[KatzePiano]

I don't really think of Watchman as a sequel, more a glimpse of what Mockingbird might have been. For me, the Atticus of one is not synonymous with the Atticus of the other - they were not meant to co-exist and instead are set in distinct universes. If I remember correctly, the trial from Mockingbird is even mentioned in Watchman and has a different outcome.
They're very different novels with very different intentions. Watchman isn't trying to be what Mockingbird ended up being. Instead it's a small story about discovering that the people you love aren't the perfect people your childhood mind thought they were. It's very fitting that Scout's shock and hurt at this discovery is mirrored by a lot of readers' reactions.
While I think her editor was right in getting Harper Lee to focus on the childhood flashbacks so that Mockingbird could become what it did, I still found it a valuable read and am genuinely baffled why so many declare it unequivocally bad.

[gentlerat]

I’ve heard some people say “Go Set a Watchman” is the better book because it’s not oversimplified but deals more honestly with upper class white collar racism. I’ll withhold judgement until I read it.

[TroyBrinson]

I enjoyed this one. Especially the running gag. I only wish you spent some time with Calpurnia. I agree with the points you made about agency vs the white savior narrative, but “Cal” was an unsung hero in this book, and I always tried to follow her example when it comes to opening myself up to others and taking risks to stand for outsiders in your culture. I think an “unsung hero” episode of It’s Lit would be enlightening

[marygebbie]

Your conclusion sums up my feelings pretty well too. It's fine to read that book, for school even, but it should be just one of many. If it is the sole work read to be used to discuss the heavy and complex history of racism, it is not adequate as a solitary representative.

[mollywantshugs]

I died at GSAW being compared to Jar-Jar. Not a comparison I was expecting even if it does fit

[mad_scadd]

This is my all time favorite fiction book. It saddens me that they have taken it out of schools. Kids need to read this book to understand how horrifying racism was in the past to prevent it from ever becoming like that again.

[rsanders]

I just love how we don’t talk about the book that shall not be named. Spoke too soon anyway in the sequel the uncle was the best character

[Sgtpepper]

Like any classic text, I think Mockingbird should be neither accepted nor rejected wholesale but should be analyzed critically for its merits and faults, and as a product of the context it arose from, and that is precisely what this video does. As a hispanic kid who grew up in a northern city, I have a fair bit of psychological distance from the Mockingbird and other Southern-set classics, but I have always found them eerie and often touching parables of American identity and the American experience. My favorites in this idiom are probably A Lesson before Dying by Gaines and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by McCullers. One I think is underrated (though also limited in perspective) is Graceanne's Book by P.L. Whitney.

[suleiman]

I loved this book - first read it in high school and totally changed the way I look at the world.

[FredKaffenberger]

The whole book is about Scout learning to not trust herself and to trust what Atticus says instead, like Jem does. Atticus says: the Klan is Gone. Tom was shot by white guards while trying to escape, but he knew that he would be killed and that was his choice, similar to Jem's statement Boo Radley's choice to stay inside all the time because of predjudice. The Klan wasn't gone. The guards may have shot Tom whether escaping or not. Boo Radley stayed inside because his father wanted to protect him.

[ironicallynice]

I have been reading Octavia Butler (Kindred, the Parable of the Sower) so thanks for showing me what to read now.

[VogonPoetry]

Forever pour one out for all the guys out there who were named after Atticus Finch 😭

[FlyToTheRain]

my required read was in 8th grade. the language arts teacher was obsessed with it and our social studies teacher joked (?) about how much room the stacks of books took up and how he was going to get rid of them. in an entirely opposite experience, a few years after i had to read it for school our local theater did a stage production of it. a childhood friend of mine played mayella ewell and it was seriously the most emotionally moving performance i've ever had the privilege of witnessing.

[amvfan]

"Please stop naming your children after fictional characters" tell that to my cousin who named his daughter Kylo Ren

[wettale]

I was literally named after Atticus Finch... I'm a POC, it's been confusing lol

[Bacopa]

BTW, I think even in TKAM Atticus can't be described as a white savior. Tom was convicted despite a robust defense in what should have been an easy acquittal. Tom later gives up on what white people can provide him and is killed in an escape attempt despite the fact that Atticus tells Tom there may be a good chance for an appeal. In this book an idealized version of a white savior fails, and fails absolutely. And not just because of poor white folks. Plenty of better off white people like the sheriff and DA supported Tom's indictment, as did a Grand Jury. And I doubt the jurors were riff-raff.

I have always read this book as a subversion of the white savior narrative. Yes, white people of good intentions and high aspirations really did exist, but not in the numbers to really change things. I say this as the great-grandson of an white man who tried, and I think backed down. My great-grandfather was on the school board of his county in a rural area of Texas. I heard this story both from my grandmother and my father. I later learned that my mother had asked my grandmother's older siblings about this story, and she told them to me. The story varies in detail, as truthful accounts do. An exactly identical set of stories is a rehearsed lie. The factual core of the story that does not vary is that my great-grandfather was at a public comment meeting about school tax spending and while he was away, the KKK made a public comment at his house, threatening his wife and children. Not sure exactly why. My grandmother was just a little girl scared by the horses and torches. Great uncle "J" said it was because they were going to bring in a "college-educated Negro" as an assistant administrator. Great aunt "V" said she did not exactly know what the board vote was about. I don't know what happened the next week at the budget vote. I only know the Klan did not come back.

Also, the term "white trash" is racist. Racist against black folks. The idea is that black people living in some state of degradation is understandable, you know, because of "natural" inferiority. Yes, yes, I fully understand that such degraded conditions are almost entirely the result of the legacy of slavery, the failed promises of Reconstruction, and subsequent racial oppression. But the "white trash" narrative claims otherwise. Black people have the supposed "excuse" of "innate" inferiority, while any white folks living like that must be total defectives.