To Kill a Mockingbird – Page 2 – Literature and Law Spring 2020

In the first part, I want to express how delighted I am to be reading this book. I love this book and it’s a very welcome change of pace from the often soul-crushingly depressing things we’ve dealt with in this course. I think it’s a breathtakingly beautiful book that manages to do the dance of dealing with the terrible parts of humanity without becoming a part of that terribleness itself.

But more to the point I want to look at the way that the children in the book, Scout Jem and Dill, go about policing each other and forming their bonds. The three of them interact in all sorts of interesting ways. Jem seems to be the leader, and Scout and Dill sort of do this interesting back and forth where at first Scout seems to be the superior but is later kind of slowly supplanted for complex reasons.

Jem falls into the leader position perhaps initially because he is the eldest of the three, but simple age doesn’t seem like much of it. He is the one who comes up with their “plays” and their games and leads them on their merry adventures of prodding the Radley house, rolling in tires, playing Tarzan, and what have you.

Scout for a long while maintains her status over Dill largely by right of seniority, and also perhaps by force. She’s a quarrelsome little girl and it’s well known that she can beat up Dill and probably does so on several occasions, however in spite of this, she winds up falling behind Dill. I think the main reason for this is that Dill comes up with games. It’s his idea to make Boo Radley come out and he begins instigating their plans and their schemes.

Scout is a rather passive character in fact. She is kind of swept up in and carried along by the plans of Jem and Dill, wrapped up in their actions, and at the mercy of Atticus’s decrees. She is very reactive, not often pro-active, and while her position as a girl seems to contribute to her distancing from Jem and Dill in some small way, I think her reactiveness has her falling behind both of them in their small little hierarchy far before that becomes an issue.

This issue is reflected often in the book. The law, the power, the status in the book, generally side with those who are the active participant, rather than the reactive ones. Tom Robinson is reactive against a situation instigated by someone else, Atticus similarly reacts against the situation and loses. Atticus is a very strong character, but often a reactive one, reacting to the town, to his sister, to Scout’s situation at school, and things generally seem to not work out in his favor.

Atticus and Scout are generally reactive characters, and they tend to lose out in their own separate worlds. How exactly this relates to justice, and who the law sides with, I’m not sure, but it seemed an interesting observation.

When reflecting on To Kill a Mockingbird, I have mixed feelings. I previously read the novel in eighth grade; however, after reading it again, I realize that I did not remember most of the storyline. When returning to this text, I feel slightly lost because I do not remember talking about any of the important themes or even the actual storyline in class when I read it the first time around. We did not discuss the significance of the trial, race relations, or falsely reported sexual assault. After reading it again, I feel like reading it at thirteen in a classroom setting is difficult because of the different places people are in their maturity, knowledge, and experiences. To Kill a Mockingbird was taught in a way where the difficult parts were glossed over and we spend a majority of our time talking about Boo Radley and his mysteriousness. We also spent a lot of time talking about the hidden gifts inside of the tree. I remember being told that this book was a classic and that it was very important, but we were never told what about it made it important. I do not have many fond memories regarding To Kill a Mockingbird solely because when someone had a question about a more mature part of the novel, the student was shut down and was told to ask a parent or the subject was changed. I do not understand why we would read a novel in school where teachers did not feel comfortable teaching the true occurrences and meanings of a novel and students could not ask questions when needed. What is different now when reading To Kill a Mockingbird is that I actually understand what is happening. I see the importance of the novel when it comes to the theme of race and the importance of a fair trial. Reading this novel in the context of a Literature and Law course, where we will actually discuss the major themes, makes far more sense than reading it in an eighth grade English class.