Gladwell's facile piece attacks the novel for not being something Lee did not intend it to be. Lee was not writing a diatribe against racism. The book is faulted for dealing with individuals rather than structures. People may have put a lot of baggage on to the book (e.g., becoming a lawyer to fight for justice because of reading it), none of though which diminishes the book. When Sheriff Tate talks Atticus into acquiescing to the version of events at the end that 'Bob Ewell fell on his knife' (after his children had been attacked by the white trash villain Ewell and saved only by the shy Boo Radley), Atticus does compromise his ethics. The town does take care of its own business. The book shows hows the matter would have been handled in such a place at such a time (early 1930's). WWII integration had not yet happened. Flannery O'Connor made a good point, whether taken archly or not, that the book is a children's book. When I was thirteen and read it, not for school-thank god-but of my own volition, and read the inscription, "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.", I was hooked. The child's perception of the world and those times at that place is paramount. The individual shaming the mob is the political lesson - changing the structures will not change hearts and minds - it will only generate new codes and new code words. The individual is where the change must take place. No one measures up to perfection and all are flawed even Atticus in this tale. Questions are raised, such as, What is Justice? Would it be more just to drag Boo Radley out into the limelight, not because he is middle class and not trash, but because he is haunted or ill (see, the young Robert Duvall shy away from the light in the film). The system was not being changed from within and matters were resolved personally, not institutionally. The rabid dog, Zeke the trashman, Calpurnia learning English from Blackstone's Commentaries . . . the book has amazing images and characters and a most compelling story. It is a story. Not a polemic. Harper Lee did not write the book to end the wrongs in the world but to share some of herself with the world, for which I am grateful. As for Gladstone, for his next project, perhaps he should take the Founding Fathers to task for not being Feminist enough or not being vegetarian.
** from Bluey Cleveland's Commentaries
On Malcolm Gladwell on 'To Kill a Mockingbird': Is It Just Racist Against White Trash?
Gladwell's facile piece attacks the novel for not being something Lee did not intend it to be. Lee was not writing a diatribe against racism. The book is faulted for dealing with individuals rather than structures. People may have put a lot of baggage on to the book (e.g., becoming a lawyer to fight for justice because of reading it), none of though which diminishes the book. When Sheriff Tate talks Atticus into acquiescing to the version of events at the end that 'Bob Ewell fell on his knife' (after his children had been attacked by the white trash villain Ewell and saved only by the shy Boo Radley), Atticus does compromise his ethics. The town does take care of its own business. The book shows hows the matter would have been handled in such a place at such a time (early 1930's). WWII integration had not yet happened. Flannery O'Connor made a good point, whether taken archly or not, that the book is a children's book. When I was thirteen and read it, not for school-thank god-but of my own volition, and read the inscription, "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.", I was hooked. The child's perception of the world and those times at that place is paramount. The individual shaming the mob is the political lesson - changing the structures will not change hearts and minds - it will only generate new codes and new code words. The individual is where the change must take place. No one measures up to perfection and all are flawed even Atticus in this tale. Questions are raised, such as, What is Justice? Would it be more just to drag Boo Radley out into the limelight, not because he is middle class and not trash, but because he is haunted or ill (see, the young Robert Duvall shy away from the light in the film). The system was not being changed from within and matters were resolved personally, not institutionally. The rabid dog, Zeke the trashman, Calpurnia learning English from Blackstone's Commentaries . . . the book has amazing images and characters and a most compelling story. It is a story. Not a polemic. Harper Lee did not write the book to end the wrongs in the world but to share some of herself with the world, for which I am grateful. As for Gladstone, for his next project, perhaps he should take the Founding Fathers to task for not being Feminist enough or not being vegetarian.
** from Bluey Cleveland's Commentaries