A Few Good Men

Harper Lee: To Kill a Mocking Bird

A “great American novel”. Probably the best of the four US-American classics I have read this summer.

The story takes place over the course of three years in a small town, Maycomb, in 1930’s Alabama. It centers on lawyer Atticus Finch, his son Jem and daughter Jean Louise a.k.a. ”Scout”. A widower, Atticus has mostly been raising his children on his own. He is a soft-spoken man, but tries to set an example for his children through his morally righteous behavior. A coming off age story, there are numerous sub-plots which describe small town life in the American South:

•  In the beginning of the story, Scout is just starting school. Thanks to her family’s black cook, Calpurnia, she already knows how to read and write. This, and Scout's "smarty pants" attempt (I admittedly googled this expression...) to explain Maycomb’s peculiarities to her teacher from out of town creates significant conflict at school. 
• Dill Harris (1), a boy who spends his summers with his aunt in Maycomb, becomes Jem’s and Scout’s best friend and kind of Scout’s first boyfriend. Together, the children aim to lure reclusive Arthur “Boo” Railey, who essentially hasn’t been seen in public since his teenage days, out of his house. It does not become clear whether Boo is staying in his house voluntarily or whether he is being kept from going out by his brother Nathan. Boo seems to be reaching out to the children by leaving them little gifts in a hole in a tree, before Nathan puts an end to this.
• The children are good friends with Miss Maudie Atkinson, their neighbor from across the street who grew up together with Atticus. She feels kind of apart from the “foot-washing Baptists” of Maycomb who condemn the pride Miss Maudie takes in gardening. In the course of the story, Miss Maudie’s house burns down and she is forced to move in with a neighbor, an event to which she reacts stoically.
• In the latter parts of the story, Atticus' sister, Aunt Alexandra, moves in with the Finchens and attempts to turn the rather boyish Scout into more of a Southern lady, which leads the two to clash with each other repeatedly.

The book’s core, however, is the story of Atticus taking over the legal defense of a black man, Tom Robinson. Robinson has been accused of rape by Mayella Ewell. Mayella is one of eight children from a family that very much stems from the social fringe of Maycomb. After Atticus accepts the mandate, parts of Maycomb’s society and even their own extended family ostracize Jem and Scout for racist reasons. During the trial, Atticus succeeds to demonstrate that the injuries that Mayella sustained were likely inflicted by her drinking, violent father Bob. Moreover, Robinson also plausibly argues that Mayella had actually tried to seduce him. In spite of the strong case of the defense, the jury still finds Tom Robinson guilty of rape, a crime for which he is likely to end up on the electric chair. Atticus and his childrens' faith in the judicial system is badly shaken. Moreover, Bob Ewell sees that the trial has damaged his already low credibility in Maycomb. He is out for revenge against anybody involved in the trial. Events take a turn to the worse, but I won’t spoil the ending for anybody who hasn’t read the book, yet.

A fascinating combination: the book is written from a child’s perspective (or retrospective?), but deals with deeply adult topics such as racism and social boundaries. It also provides the perfect description of what I would imagine a childhood in the southern states to be like: porches, kids playing in the nature, families going back generations, Baptism, Southern ladies meeting for tea and cake etc. The court room drama of Atticus mounting a defense for Tom Robinson is gripping. At times, the description is so perfect that the novel almost conveys the feeling of watching a movie. Moreover, the main protagonist, Atticus Finch, is a morally righteous but at the same time three-dimensional figure, not the easiest combination for a writer to achieve. Overall, highly recommended. Comes out ahead of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”. Well, and I won’t be talking about Kerouac’s “On the Road”. Ever again.
Next on the list of American classics: John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath".       

Random movie reference:

Boo Radley kind of reminded me of Bart’s Siamese twin brother, Hugo…

Favorite quotes:

“There are just some kind of men who are so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”(Miss Maudie)

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.” (Miss Maudie, again, smart woman).

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience” (Atticus)

“Real courage … ‘s when you know you are licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” (Atticus)

“With him, life was routine; without him life was unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days.” (Scout)

“Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.” (Atticus)

“Atticus, he was really nice” … “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”

Notes:

(1) Interestingly, Dill is based on Truman Capote, a childhood friend of Harper Lee. In this incarnation, Capote seems significantly less annoying than the Philipp Seymour Hoffmann version I had in mind.