Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (25 page)

Chapter 28 begins the return of Lee's use of Halloween imagery by introducing a life-in-death spirit that is said to suck the breath of life from individuals it meets on a dark road (
TKAM
293). Not surprisingly, this mention occurs in front of the Radley Place but is modified by the narrator's comment that “Haints, Hot Streams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished with our years as mist with sunrise” (
TKAM
292). This dismissal of superstition is followed, however, by the sudden appearance of Scott's classmate, Cecil Jacobs, who surprisingly leaps from the dark to scare the children while they are on their way to the pageant. Although they have previously asserted a maturity that would nullify unwarranted fear, this interaction intensifies the unease that Jem and Scout will experience when they arrive at the auditorium. When at the Halloween celebration, the children demonstrate a developing maturity that helps them survive the House of
h
orrors and the ghoul guide who makes them touch normal objects that are intended to suggest severed body parts, but eventually the two siblings must face the scary walk home in the dark with Scout still encased and restricted in a ham costume (perhaps another indicator of the imprisonment/fear of enclosed spaces discussed previously). The spooky sounds of echoing footsteps cause
j
em to stop briefly and motivate Scout to suggest that he is deliberately trying to scare her (
TKAM
298). They also suspect Cecil of returning to frighten them—this time when it is pitch black. The unknown presence this time is, of course, not a child playing a prank but instead the malevolent Bob Ewell, who threatens the children and is bent on taking revenge on Atticus Finch for sullying the Ewell name during the Tom
r
obinson trial for the rape of Ewell's daughter, Mayella. Again relying on irony, Lee makes a white man into the dark and evil presence and, at the same time, transforms the Boo of the earlier episodes from a scary ghost into a Savior figure.

According to Robert Butler, “His [Boo's] difficult environment . . . should have made him the monster the town perceives him to be, but, in fact, he is a decent and courageous man” and can be “perceive[ed] as an innocent, even saintly figure” (
TKAM
124). Of course, readers have been prepared for this transformation by Boo's previous actions—his kind treatment of Jem (folding and mending his pants in chapter 6) and his protection of Scout (covering her with a blanket during the fire at Miss Maudie's in Chapter 8 [
TKAM
81]). Such kindness/generosity is also shown in the gifts of gum, carved figures, and pennies that Boo leaves for Jem and Scout in the knothole of the tree. Butler also asserts that the Boo who appears at the end of the novel is characterized by “goodness, generosity and kindness . . . a guardian angel that saves them [the children] from a man whose very name—Ewell—suggests evil” (124).

Things that go bump in the night, ghosts, masks, and supernatural dark events are all revealed as mere illusions. Even Scout's description of Boo as he cowers behind the bedroom door indicates Lee's belief that outward appearances are deceiving. It also reflects Boo's tendency to prefer darkness over light and to remain in the shadow world of Maycomb society. The description of Radley reads like a description from a horror novel. Scout's description follows:

His face was as white as his hands, but for a shadow on his jutting chin. His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples and his grey eyes were so colorless, I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin, almost feathery on the top of his head. (
TKAM
310)

Yet somehow Scout knows this man is not a zombie, and his scary looks do not reflect a dangerous personality. Given this conclusion, it is not difficult to make the connections about not being deceived by appearance; instead, readers are invited to conclude that, even as the town's assumptions about Boo have been inaccurate, so the white citizenry's reaction to blacks is yet another unwarranted fear. Perhaps Lee really does agree with Franklin Delano Roosevelt that most fears are unfounded and are based on prejudices and undocumented assumptions. If so, then Roosevelt was right; the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

However, as long as black men like Tom
r
obinson need to be afraid of white courts, white mob violence, and prejudiced white juries (see
TKAM
232–233) and as long as the potential for lynching before a fair trial can occur exists (see the jail scene in chapter 15), race will continue as a factor in determining our assessment of intelligence, physical abilities, and human worth. Clearly, the challenge for Lee's readers and for America as a whole is to reassess the accuracy of its unwarranted fear of the dark.

As Lee seems to suggest in the novel, historical evidence indicates that contrary to what most white people might like to believe, the black race was probably the first one on the planet and was not an aberration. Indeed, if this is so, despite feelings of Caucasian superiority, it is more than likely that all whites have a drop of Negro blood in their veins. Indeed, according to paleoanthropologists, our earliest human ancestors did come from Africa, and it seems likely that they were dark skinned. More importantly, the findings of the Human Genome Project support the idea that we are, indeed, one human family.
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In the novel, Scout asks Jem, “How do you know we ain't Negroes?” to which Jem replies, “Uncle Jack Finch says we really don't know . . . for all he knows we mighta come straight out of Ethiopia durin' the Old Testament.” When Scout protests that that time frame is so long ago it doesn't matter, Jem replies, “That's what I thought . . . but around here once you have one drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black” (
TKAM
184). Perhaps Lee's implication is that Caucasian readers of the novel have an obligation to admit that they are similar to what Scout labels an “absolute morphodite” in chapter 8: a muddy black snowman who is merely covered with a surface-thin film of white exterior (
TKAM
75). This pseudo-snowman is yet another example of Lee's use of masked appearances. The truth is, it is not a snowman; it is rather a collection of hampers and baskets of dirt collected from the Finches' backyard. When encased in snow borrowed from Miss Maudie's yard, the snowman only appears to be real.

Certainly, in the novel, no one can know his or her racial heritage as a certainty since as generations passed, skin color began to modify. It is also impossible to say which race was the first. But what if? What if the belief in Maycomb that one drop of Negro blood makes you black is absolutely correct (
TKAM
184)? If that statement is taken literally, it follows that everyone must admit his or her dark-skinned heritage because somewhere in the past, each person had one chromosome from a Negro ancestor; it then also follows that in order to fear the black race, we would be forced to fear ourselves.

Furthermore, the typical Southern belief that one drop of blood tainted an individual was merely a way to keep the freed slaves and their descendents under the thumb of white supremacy and to reestablish the social balance in the South. The only hope for social power that “poor white trash” such as the Ewells had over the blacks who, in many cases, were socially and economically above them was ultimately the fact that they were white. Thus Bob Ewell's smugness and cockiness derive from the fact that he knows he will be believed over Tom, regardless of the evidence. His skin color is all that he has.
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His anger at Atticus is in part a result of the ways in which Atticus makes it clear that skin color just may not be enough anymore.

That, of course, is the message of
To Kill a Mockingbird
and of FDR, and it is repeated often in the text. Instead of being scared of what appears to be different, we need to admit we are all essentially the same. Like Jem, we need to be colorblind (
TKAM
134) and attempt to see all folks as folks. This exhortation toward equality is seen after the Tom Robinson trial, when Jem tells Scout, “I've got it figured out. There's four kind of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there's the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes” (
TKAM
258). As he and Scout argue over this classification, it becomes clear that his divisions are foolish because “everybody's family is just as old as everybody else's” (
TKAM
258); the idea of fine folks and old family is fantasy, and there's “just one kind of folk. Folks” (
TKAM
259).

Lee reasons that if we stop hurting others who have done nothing to hurt us, we will find that stepping into another's skin allows us to discover how much like us they really are (see
TKAM
33, 65, 249). Johnson reminds readers that the lure of terror is perhaps universal—especially among children who seem to relish being scared (69). But, as Edgar Allen Poe famously noted, perhaps the ideal end effect of terror is transcendence of the event rather than being defeated by it. When an individual breaks through to an understanding of his or her own psyche, such recognition is of “peculiar epiphanic importance” (Johnson 69).

The fact that most differences in people are harmless is discovered by Scout and Jem in numerous episodes in the book. As they discover Boo's friendliness, as they begin to understand the reason for Mrs. Dubose's hostile nature, as they realize the contradictions evident in the Missionary Society's failure to see their own hypocrisy, as they enjoy a heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Dolphus Raymond, and as they sit in the Negro balcony at the trial, understanding slowly develops. They have experienced the worldview of another and have gained significant knowledge that had previously been concealed by the veil of apparent otherness.

Johnson quotes Kate Ferguson Ellis as asserting the following: “Not knowing is the primary source of Gothic terror and knowing can only occur with seeing and experiencing the unknown” (Ellis qtd. in Johnson 69). Ellis also states, “Two fears dominate the Gothic world, the fear of terrible separateness and the fear of unity with some terrible Other” (22). Similarly Robert Butler's closing assessment of the novel's conclusion foregrounds what he labels the religious discovery made by Scout in the final tableaux as she “overcom[es] her initial terror and disorientation, [and] is calmed by Boo's gentleness, warmth and radiant presence” (131). Deeply touched by her close contact, she experiences her world as “transfigured” as Boo becomes a neighbor and friend rather than someone to be feared (131). Johnson seems to agree, stating, “By the novel's end, Boo has shed his horror story stereotype and becomes a fully developed, if somewhat odd human being, who discards his nickname and is called Mr. Arthur by Scout after his normalization” (50). In short, the fears we develop are mostly imaginary, born from the delusion that harm and injury will be sustained from that which is different. If we allow these frightening elements free range, they will control our lives—but only if we let them. After all, as Scout tell us, “Nothin's real scary except in books” (
TKAM
322) and most people are real nice “when you finally see them” (
TKAM
323).

Notes

1.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
, Inaugural Address, 4 March 1933 as quoted in
The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933
. Ed. Samuel Roseman.
New York
:
Random House
, 1938. (11–16). Even more relevant is the fact that Lee references the speech in the novel itself, stating on page 6: “Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.”

2. Lee even mentions the Hitler phenomenon (which ironically also began in January 1933 with Hitler's appointment as Reich's chancellor) and suggests the supreme irony that is evident in America's fear of racial oppression abroad while it continued to practice it at home. See
TKAM
280–283 for the discussion of Germany's policies as opposed to American democracy.

3. Dill's fantasies are shown in his account of his running away from home during the third summer of the narrative, a tale in which he claims to have been fearfully tortured, bound in chains and left to die in the basement. His account of escaping from being restrained by wrist manacles and of being forced to walk from Meridian to Maycomb clearly shows how he tends to exaggerate fears and dangers. (
TKAM
158)

4. The
Oxford English Dictionary
offers this as the first example of the usage: “1945
L. SHELLY Hepcats Jive Talk Dict. 17/2 Spook (n), frightened negro.”

5. Dill even claims, “I mean I can smell somebody an' tell if they're gonna die. An old lady taught me how” (
TKAM
410), subsequently predicting Scout's death in three days and further fostering Jem and Scout's apprehensions over Boo's threatening personality.

6. There is no doubt a symbolic purpose in Lee's choice of white camellias and in her naming the flowers Snow on the Mountain.

7. Jung's concept of archetypes also foregrounds what he labeled “the shadow”—the unconscious negative or dark side of the personality, and he too spoke of the inevitable fear of the dark observed in most infants. Moreover, according to http://www.guideto
psychology.com/identity.htm, “Quite often [Jung's] fear of the unconscious manifests itself as a specific phobia whereby the interior terror becomes projected on to external objects, situations, or even the environment itself such as a fear of the dark.”

8. For further information of the Human Genome Project, see http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/education/education.shtml