On Killing a Mockingbird

Introduction

I finished this book on 28-03-2024. Thanks to the free classes at school, I progressed quite fast. I first learned about this book from my literature teacher Erdem Asıbostan, who was in our class in the past years. He described this novel as the book that affected him the most and changed his life. I was in the 9th grade when he talked about how the novel affected him. I am now almost at the end of the 11th grade. It has been a novel that has waited on the shelf for a long time for me, but I can say that I am glad it did. If I had read it in the past, I would have quickly gotten bored and given up. Now I read it patiently, paying attention until around page 50. The novel is interested in completing the construction of the environment and characters in which the events develop for a certain period of time. Although it has the potential to create a prejudice that the novel is boring at first, I can easily say that it pays off many times over.

Summary

Set in 1930, the novel takes place in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the United States of America. The consequences of the Depression are everywhere. Farmers are particularly badly affected. The townspeople are struggling to make ends meet and trying to raise their children in poor conditions.

The Finch family lives in Maycomb, a town where black people are deeply despised. Simon Finch is one of the ancestors of this family. It was a tradition for the men of the family to stay on Simon’s farm, known as Finch Land, and make a living growing cotton. They were also tied to the land, and the Finches did not move away from it. Until Atticus Finch went to Montgomery to study law. His younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. After Atticus Finch was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began practicing law.

We hear the events of the novel from Atticus’ daughter Scout. Scout, who lives with her lawyer father Atticus and her older brother Jem, who is four years older than her, lost her mother when she was two years old. When Atticus did not remarry, Scout and Jem grew up with Calpurnia, a black nanny. Scout is six and Jem is ten years old when the plot develops in the book.

Thanks to Atticus, the Finch brothers learned to read and write before they started school. They often notice that Atticus is busy with a newspaper or magazine every evening. Moreover, Atticus makes them read something before going to bed. Apart from newspapers, magazines and books, the Finch brothers run, jump and play games. One day they meet a new boy during their play: Charles Baker Harris. This seven-year-old boy is nicknamed Dill and is often called by that name. Thus, a new person enters the brothers’ role-playing games. Now they play together and have fun together. The Radley family is the most mysterious and remarkable family in town. The son of the family, Mr. Arthur, has become the talk of the town with his nickname “Radley the Boogeyman”. He never comes out of the house and no one knows if he is dead or alive or what he is doing inside, which intrigues Scout, Jem and Dill in particular. Even when they start going to school, they always pass by the Radley house. They run past because they are scared. One day they start to involve the Radleys in their games. They do all sorts of mischief to see who will be braver and knock on their door and run away. One day it gets serious and Mr. Radley opens fire with his rifle. Jem luckily dodges the bullet, but when everyone, including Atticus, finds out about the incident, they try not to have any contact with Mr. Radley for a long time.

While the children are busy trying to get Radley the Boogeyman out of his house, Atticus Finch is busy taking on a case that has become the talk of the town. Mr. Taylor, a judge who knows Atticus, approaches Atticus about taking on the Tom Robinson case. Tom Robinson is alleged to have raped the Ewells’ nineteen-year-old daughter. Due to the sensitivity of the issue and the fact that Robinson is a black man, everyone in the town characterizes this case as something that happened before it was brought to court, and they spew terrible hatred against Robinson. Atticus takes on this case.

Atticus’ taking on the case had a bad effect on the Finch family’s reputation in the town of Maycomb. Even the closest relatives made fun of this situation and even the children were despised. Moreover, when the children went to school, they were greeted with the same attitude by their peers. Because of this, Scout and Jem got into fights with their friends and beat up a few people badly. Over time, Scout and Jem became very involved in lawsuits and court cases. Scout asks his father what is the reason for people’s attitudes: “If you’re not supposed to defend him, why are you doing it?” Atticus explains that the most important reason is that he will never be able to walk around town with his head held high again, never be able to look Scout and Jem in the face again. It would be appropriate to say that Atticus is a man of the cause.

Until the day of the trial, Atticus continues his research and work on the case. The children’s current preoccupation is no longer dealing with Radley the Boogeyman, but following the case and keeping an eye on what is going on. At this point, it would not be wrong to say that they become individuals who start to question and mature. It would probably be a headache for Atticus if they started to meddle in everything, but the children’s mischievousness also triggers the reader and puts you into the action just like a child.

The day of the trial has arrived. Scout, Jem and Dill have infiltrated the courtroom. Everyone is there: Tom Robinson, Atticus, Mr. Ewell, Mayella Ewell… One by one, Atticus listens to the eyewitness accounts of what happened on the night of August 21. Mr. Ewell and his daughter Mayella Ewell insist that it was a fait accompli because they say they saw Tom Robinson with their own eyes. They are so sure that they don’t even need medical proof. Atticus, on the other hand, professionally demonstrates that things cannot be dismissed so quickly. The evidence shows that the girl was punched with her left hand. Giving Mr. Ewell a pen and paper and asking him to write his name, Atticus proves that he is left-handed. Moreover, Robinson lost his left hand to a cotton gin at a young age and has never been able to use it effectively. Moreover, Atticus shows that the Ewells are not so sure of what they see with their eyes with his skillfully worded questions, using doubtful and sometimes inconsistent expressions such as “like, probably” and so on. The truth was that Tom Robinson had only been there that night to help Mayelle, but when Mr. Ewell realized that he had caught Mayelle in an erotic situation with Robinson, he ran screaming into the room, while Robinson had already left the house out of fear. It was actually her father, Mr. Ewell, who had done this to Mayelle. Perhaps because Mayelle was so blindsided that she couldn’t even turn around and the last person she saw was Robinson, she blamed Robinson despite Mr. Ewell’s shouts. Or she had helped Mr. Ewell cover up the truth because she was afraid to accuse her father.

At the end of the day, the jury’s verdict puts Robinson in jail. Despite Atticus’ professional defense, the jurors would never attempt to defend a black man, especially when the case is as sensitive as this one. After his imprisonment, Robinson tries to escape but is killed instantly.

Scout and Jem have learned a lot from Atticus. Nevertheless, they are saddened by what has happened. But the Finches are not done with the Ewells yet. Even though the case was lost, Robinson was imprisoned and even killed, Mr. Ewell lost his reputation in town because of Atticus. He was even fired from his job as a result. He’s turned into a thug who messes with everything. On Halloween, when the night is very dark, Ewell attacks Jem and Scout and fails in his attempt. Jem is unconscious with a broken arm and Scout is safe. Someone had obviously intervened, but the attack had happened so quickly and so blindly that it is hard to tell. This person had also carried Jem home on his back. Scout followed him home a little later. At home, Dr. Reynolds takes care of Jem while Scout tells Atticus what happened. Reynolds tells Atticus that Mr. Ewell’s dead body is lying under the tree. A knife is lying on top of it.

Mr. Arthur, aka Radley the Boogeyman, is leaning against the wall, listening to Atticus. Scout gestures to Radley the Boogeyman and salutes him as if nothing has happened. Although Sheriff Heck predicts that Ewell fell on his own knife, my interpretation as a reader is that they hide the fact that Radley the Boogeyman killed Ewell in order not to scare Scout. Moreover, Atticus thanked him for his children. The novel ends with Scout taking Arthur by the hand and escorting him home.

Comment & Conclusion

I enjoyed the simple and easy-to-follow language of the book, and it was a special admiration to witness what a solid father figure he represents in almost every scene with Atticus. Throughout the book, between the lines, there are very good lessons, very good messages. It was a very different experience to look at the world through the eyes of a little girl named Scout in the town of Maycomb, a town where black people are severely racialized and badly affected by the economic depression. Witnessing how Atticus manages to become a professional father and lawyer in such an environment and seeing how this blends with the character development of children was a remarkable vision. Atticus was truly a man of the cause. It takes courage and wisdom to go against everyone in a situation where everyone takes a certain side. Atticus has the impressive quality of Socrates’ determination to let the Athenians execute him.

It is also important to mention the character development of children. The characters who play, run and jump at the beginning of the book start to deal with the realities of life. So much so that in the finale, Scout acts very normal even though Radley the Boogeyman is standing right in front of her. It’s as if they weren’t the ones who did all that crazy stuff on the Radleys’ porch in the past. By the way, it is a tribute to the author’s imagination how the Radleys are one of the most important parts of the novel, even though they have no direct influence on the course of events - because it is the trial processes that are at the forefront of the novel. At first you are very interested in the Boogeyman like a child, then he disappears from your mind with the court proceedings and reappears in the finale.

Although I did not include it in my summary, the children’s fight with Mrs. Dubose was one of the most memorable parts of the book. Dubose called Atticus a “nigger fan” and badmouthing their father to the children. Scout and Jem were rightly angry and tried to tell him off. Dubose got on my nerves even as a reader there. And I thought the kids’ aggressive behavior was justified. Then what happened, Atticus came and asked them to apologize to Dubose. He didn’t have a problem with them insulting him, he took it normally. And as punishment, the kids read to Dubose for a month. And all that time Dubose hadn’t even heard them. Dubose was a woman who knew she was dying, and her last wish before she died was to be free of her illness, to be a person who could die without any restraints. For a month she went off her medication and stood firm against her illness. In the end, she would die again, but this time she would have successfully fulfilled her wish, and so she did: She died as a free person. Atticus described her as the bravest person he had ever known, and it was at this point that he defined courage: “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, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” When I read these lines, I immediately underlined them, they were really moving.

I would like to conclude with a few of my favorite quotes from Atticus:

“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, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

“First of all, if you learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”

“I’d rather you shoot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. 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.”

- Atticus