4th of July and Mockingbird, Essay Example

Life in a small Deep South town takes on meanings larger than the conflicts and characters depicted by Harper Lee in her single published novel, To Kill A Mockingbird.  Many of the themes she wrote in the pages of her novel were signs of changing times during the early 1960s, when To Kill A Mockingbird rocketed to New York Time best-seller status.  The story also emphasizes the significance of American rights, liberties, and freedoms which were established on July 4, 1776.

Principles of freedom and justice upon which America had been founded nearly two hundred years previously are called into question in this novel which dared to look past the fictions by which racism and injustice were portrayed.  Such declarations by upscale whites of the time that, for example, blacks were mentally incapable of assuming the roles full citizenship in society are penetrated and exposed as hypocrisy by Harper Lee.

The hypocrisy is based on mostly unspoken “code,” which is named and exposed by Atticus Finch, one of the main characters, the attorney father of Scout Finch, the eight-year-old narrator of Harper Lee’s novel. It is generally agreed by critics that Scout is a fictional stand-in for Harper Lee herself, who grew up in real-life Monroeville, Alabama, a town not very different from Maycomb, the Deep South town that is the setting for To Kill A Mockingbird.  In his summation in the trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman, Atticus Finch explains the “code” and the woman’s reasons for both violating and upholding it.

“I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the state, but my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man’s life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt…She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with” (Lee, 214.)

The state’s chief witness, Mayella Ewell, is a poor white woman who, as Lee reveals to her novel’s readers, “…did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man” (Lee, 214). The black man in this case, Tom Robinson, is now on trial for rape, since Mayella has accused him of this felony to cover up her violation of “the code.”  The storyline reflects the rights and liberties established in the founding of the United States of America.  Although the woman accuses the man of rape, he is entitled to a trial by jury nonetheless – an honored American liberty.

On July 4, 1776 the Founding Fathers of a new nation declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” (Jefferson, Franklin and Adams).  As explained in these rights, all men deserve equal and just treatment, including conviction of crimes.

The theme of justice is eloquently expressed during the trial of Tom Robinson and in circumstances leading up to and following that miscarriage of justice.  Harper Lee’s brilliance in choosing as her narrator an eight-year-old girl enables her to explore and expose the themes of freedom and justice in To Kill A Mockingbird that would not have been possible if Scout were portrayed as a grown woman.

This intriguing intersection of stark adult power plays according to “the code,” and a child’s innocence and ability to see things and express them literally is clearly written by Lee in a scene that takes place in front of the Maycomb jail in the middle of the night.  Atticus is sitting under a lamp beside the front door when several car loads of local white farmers and workers drive up.  Their goal is to remove Tom Robinson from the jail and provide their own summary justice, death by hanging from the nearest tree.  This is taking the law into one’s own hands was known as “lynching” The men get out of their cars and approach Atticus, who refuses to move from his position by the jail’s front door.  He is one against a dozen or more and things, as the saying goes, “don’t look good” for the good guy.  But his daughter Scout, who has walked down from their home in the middle of the night, to, along with her brother Jem, offer moral support, chooses this moment to speak up.

She asks one of the men, Mr. Cunningham, about his family and a legal case he is involved in.  As Scout later says, she doesn’t know why everybody became silent and Atticus’s mouth hung open while she engaged in her conversation. This is the unique strength of the novel, we see adult matters through a child’s eyes, and suddenly things become clear, despite the “code” hovering over race relations in Maycomb-Monroeville and, by extension, the rest of the country at that time.  Mr. Cunningham kneels down, grasps Scout by the shoulders and tells her he will tell his family she “said hello” (Lee, 163). Then, shamed by a child’s innocence, the men get back in their cars and drive away. Scout later tells the readers of To Kill A Mockingbird she didn’t know what all the fuss was about there in front of the jail in the middle of the night.

But children do not usually change the course of injustice.  The novel would not have its famous ring of truth, if it were written in any other fashion.  Children speak their minds without guile and are protected in To Kill A Mockingbird.  But the “code” dictates how Tom’s trial will turn out.  He is found guilty of raping Mayella, despite massive evidence to the contrary established by Atticus, his defense attorney during cross-examination of Mayella, her father and others.

Lee’s novel makes me value the principles of justice and freedom and to seek to stand up for them as is possible in my own life.  The story enforces everything that the United States was founded upon on July 4, 1776.  Scout tells us, as her own learning process goes on, that “justice is often complicated, but must always be founded upon the notions of equality and fairness for all.”  Even a child can understand that.  This is an issue that still matters today.  For this reason we must celebrate Harper Lee for creating this wonderful mirror and reminding us that we can’t ever forget to care about justice.  Because otherwise we might eventually be prevented by the powers of injustice from being able to.

Works Cited

Ajayi, Akin. “To Kill a Mockingbird: the case for the defence.” The Guardian, Friday 9 July 2010 09.49 EDT [http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/jul/09/kill-a mockingbird-racism]

Jefferson, Thomas, et al. “Declaration of Independence.” 4 July 1776. The Charters of Freedom. Web. 20 March 2014.

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. Pleasantville, NY: Readers Digest Association. 1993