Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (28 page)

Such integration did not, however, end all racial prejudices, as the same general stereotypes about African Americans in
To Kill a Mockingbird
were still visible years later. Scout explains, “To Maycomb, Tom's death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw” (
TKAM
275). This is reflective of the thought that, even after African Americans were permitted to play major college football in the South and had demonstrated themselves as equal (if not superior) athletes, they were thought unfit to play quarterback, a position that demands superior intellect, planning, and patience. In Bryant's final two seasons as coach, this last barrier was shattered, with Walter Lewis expertly serving as Alabama's starting quarterback from 1981–1983. Just as revealing, when Bryant died in 1983 (twenty-eight days after coaching his last game), Lewis was one of the pallbearers selected to carry Bryant's coffin along with teammate Jeremiah Castille—a pair African Americans entrusted with the body of the most famous white man in what had been the most segregated state in the country (figure 10.5).

In the fifty years since its publication,
To Kill a Mockingbird
has remained an exceedingly relevant work to American culture, partly for the cultural aspects within the book that have changed, but also for those cultural aspects that have not changed. Nowhere is this uneasy relationship between progress and tradition more evident than within sports, which in spite of its peripheral status in the novel is central to both the establishment of the book's characters and the placement of the novel in relevant terms for contemporary readers. Making the varsity football team is still often seen as a rite of passage into manhood, and females are still accorded only secondary roles within high school and college football. However, the opportunities that have been generated for girls in other sports, and the overwhelming success of African American athletes at major Southern universities points to a more equitable society, one reflective of much of the progress that Lee advocates in her literary masterpiece.

Notes

1. Indeed, the only non-football magazine Jem is depicted reading in
To Kill a Mockingbird
is
Popular Mechanics
(250), another decidedly popular publication among adolescent boys.

2. All photos in this chapter are reprinted courtesy of the Paul W. Bryant Museum.

3. Instead, African American players played for either integrated teams in the North or for historically black colleges and universities in the South. Many of these schools, such as Grambling University and Southern University, consistently had teams that rivaled the larger schools of the South in terms of talent and sent comparable numbers of players to the NFL.

4. Bryant's record for all-time wins (323) has since been eclipsed on a number of occasions. The record is currently held by Penn State's Joe Paterno, with 394 wins entering the 2010 season, while Florida State's Bobby Bowden (who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, during the years that
To Kill a Mockingbird
took place and attended the University of Alabama at the same time as Harper Lee) is currently second, with 389 wins.

Works Cited

Lee, Harper.
To Kill a Mockingbird
. 1960. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.

Messenger, Christian K. “Football as Narrative.”
American Literary History
7.4 (Winter 1995): 726–39.

Oriard, Michael.
Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle
. Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 1993.

Saney, Isaac. “The Case against
To Kill a Mockingbird
.”
Race & Class: A Journal for Black and Third World Liberation
45.1 (July–September 2003): 99–105.

Shields, Charles J.
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006.

Ware, Michele S. “‘Just a Lady': Gender and Power in Harper Lee's
To Kill a Mockingbird
.” In
Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender
. Ed. Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. (286–88)

Yaeger, Don.
Turning of the Tide: How One Game Changed the South
. New York: Center Street, 2006.

Jochem Riesthuis

Life in Maycomb, Alabama, the archetypal Southern town that is the setting of Harper Lee's
To Kill a Mockingbird
, is rife with symbolism. Every incident and every occurrence is seen in the light of an ideal, a greater truth. Typical of this tendency to look for the moral of every story is narrator Scout's Aunt Alexandra:

Aunt Alexandra, in underlining the moral of young Sam Merriweather's suicide, said it was caused by a morbid streak in the family. Let a sixteen-year-old girl giggle in the choir and Aunty would say, “It just goes to show you, all the Penfield women are flighty.” Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a Streak: a Drinking Streak, a Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak. (
TKAM
147)

In this manner, each adventure of Scout Finch seems to express some essential truth about the characters, Southern society, morality, or humanity at large. Yet, as the quote above highlights, the truth of the claim “All the Penfield women are flighty” lies as much in the eye of the beholder as in actual occurrences. Since many of the townspeople view life in Maycomb similarly to Aunt Alexandra, life begins to conform itself to those truisms, and thus the truisms seem all the more true.
To Kill a Mockingbird
upsets this delicate cycle by introducing the possibility of seeing things differently.

What Scout slowly learns—from Atticus, from her uncle Jack Finch, from her brother Jem, from Calpurnia, and even from Aunt Alexandra—is not merely tolerance and empathy, to “climb into [another's] skin and walk around in it” (
TKAM
33), but, more importantly, to look beyond the so-called tried and true toward new meaning and new ideas of honor and justice. She is learning to question the truth of seeing life in symbols and “streaks.” As readers accompany her on this journey of discovery, they observe how Scout comes to see the constructedness of social conventions. While the novel shows Southern life changing toward what, to the reader of 1961, would seem social justice, it is also, in a similarly 1950s–1960s move, “deconstructing” some of the myths and truths supporting the old social order. Such questioning of images, stories, and old truths is echoed in French literary theory of the period, most notably in Roland Barthes' 1957
Mythologies
.

This essay examines three specific episodes in
To Kill a Mockingbird
: the Tim Johnson episode (part 1, chapter 10), where Atticus shoots a mad dog; Scout's first day of school (part 1, chapters 2 and 3), which highlights the role of reading in the narrative and also introduces the Ewells; and the Dolphus Raymond episode (part 2, chapters 16 and 20), which shows how Mr. Dolphus Raymond uses and deliberately encourages his scandalous reputation. This essay explores the role of each episode in order to determine its function within the larger narrative. Hopefully, this examination will foreground how these episodes enhance or challenge preconceived notions of symbolism, of reading meaning into everyday occurrences, itself.

The Tim Johnson Episode (part 1, chapter 10)

Chapter 10 starts with Scout's description of her father, Atticus Finch, as she compares him to other fathers in Maycomb: “Our father didn't do anything. He worked in an office, not in a drugstore. Atticus did not drive a dump-truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone” (
TKAM
102). What Atticus doesn't do, here, is work in plain sight of everyone, nor does he perform physical labor with his hands. Yet the real problem seems to be not his profession, which is honorable enough, nor his work as a state legislator, for which he is returned in several elections. No, the real problem is with what Atticus does when he is not working or what he does not do: “He did not do the things our schoolmates' fathers did: he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat in the livingroom and read” (
TKAM
102–103).

Through the embarrassment of his children, Atticus is portrayed as less than a full man. He is described as feeble, blind in one eye, and with glasses, yet at the same time as an intellectual: “Our father didn't do anything. . . . He sat in the livingroom and read.” There are echoes here not only of Oblomov, the lethargic central character of Russian author Ivan Goncharov's novel of the same name,
1
but also of Baudelaire's flaneur and modernism's anti-hero. Yet this anti-hero is not some aristocratic Russian on his estate or an independent artist as a young man, wandering the streets of the modern city. However atypical for Maycomb, Atticus is a father and a respected member of Maycomb society.

Thus one of the objectives of chapter 10 is to place Atticus in an unfamiliar role, to show him taking responsibility and presenting himself, however reluctantly, as a man of the South. When Tim Johnson, the mad dog, comes up the road and sheriff Heck Tate forces his gun on Atticus, the latter can no longer hide his innate ability to kill:

“Take him, Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate handed the rifle to Atticus; Jem and I nearly fainted.

“Don't waste time, Heck,” said Atticus. “Go on.”

“Mr. Finch, this is a one-shot job.”

Atticus shook his head vehemently: “Don't just stand there, Heck! He won't wait all day for you—”

“For God's sake, Mr. Finch, look where he is! Miss and you'll go straight into the Radley house! I can't shoot that well and you know it!”

“I haven't shot a gun in thirty years—”

Mr. Tate almost threw the rifle at Atticus. “I'd feel mighty comfortable if you did now,” he said.

In a fog, Jem and I watched our father take the gun and walk out into the middle of the street. (
TKAM
109)

In a setting reminiscent of the classic Western, the lone hero steps out into the street to meet his enemy and eliminate him permanently. Never mind the contradictions to heroism that appear in the rather embarrassing scene preceding it, where both Heck Tate and Atticus seem less than manly in their eagerness to pass up this confrontation, each downplaying any ability with a gun they might have. Indeed, Atticus's willingness to leave this one to the “proper authorities” would seem to indicate a lack of belief in himself.

Yet when he gets out in to the street, and the crucial moment arises, he is in control and his body moves seamlessly to his command: “With movements so swift they seemed simultaneous, Atticus's hand yanked a ball-tipped lever as he brought the gun to his shoulder. The rifle cracked” (
TKAM
110). In the killing of the “beast,” but even more in the ability to do so in one shot, Atticus is reaffirming his credentials as a Finch, that is, as a Southern gentleman. In the same swift movements, his action also reaffirms his loyalty to the town of Maycomb by putting his life on the line to protect its citizens.

At the crucial moment, the “movements so swift they seemed simultaneous” (
TKAM
110) emphasize Atticus's physical being, his masculinity. Unsurprising, then, that we see him discard the symbol of his intellect, his glasses, just before those movements: “Atticus pushed his glasses to his forehead; they slipped down, and he dropped them in the street. In the silence, I heard them crack” (
TKAM
110). It is not his mind, or even his enhanced vision, that he needs for this task, but his inherent being, his “Finchness” and his body. And yet, when it is all over and the killing is done, Atticus stoops and picks up his glasses, merely grinding the broken lenses to powder. He realizes that he will still need glasses in order to exercise that other side of his personality, his intellect. If one of the messages of this chapter is that Atticus has the inclination of a Southern gentleman as well as the physical courage needed for the coming legal battle, the saving of the specs' frame also shows his determination to keep his ground and symbolizes his belief in his intellect and the rule of law.

Atticus's prowess with a gun astonishes Jem and Scout, much to the amusement of both Heck Tate and Miss Maudie. Yet when Heck starts to expound on Atticus's talent as a marksman, Atticus is quick to silence him. “Hush, Heck,” said Atticus, “let's go back to town” (
TKAM
111). With this, Atticus is deflecting the glory of the kill, leaving it to Miss Maudie to explain both his talent and his behavior in denying it.

“Maybe I can tell you,” said Miss Maudie. “If your father's anything, he's civilized in his heart. Marksmanship's a gift of God, a talent—oh, you have to practice to make it perfect, but shootin's different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn't shoot till he had to, and he had to today.”

“Look's like he'd be proud of it,” I said.

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,” said Miss Maudie. (
TKAM
112)

The description of marksmanship as a God-given talent might slightly rattle our postwar sensibilities, but it does seem to accurately describe the general view of Maycomb's residents. In fact, marksmanship is a prerequisite to Atticus's civilization: he needs to be at an unfair advantage to be able to repudiate it. The refusal to take pride in his God-given talent is, at the very least in Miss Maudie's mind, a mere sign of Atticus's sanity. By tying his uncanny marksmanship—considered by society as an aspect of his masculine body—to civilization and right-mindedness, Miss Maudie weds the two divergent aspects of Atticus's persona—his intellectual behavior and his physical courage—into one, a union suitably expressed by his son: “[Jem] called back: ‘Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!'” (
TKAM
113).

While chapter 10 thus serves to establish Atticus as a Southern gentleman, albeit of an unusual cut, it is also a chapter full of foreboding, where danger, disease, mania, and death invade the quiet street where Scout lives. All of this is encapsulated in the figure of Tim Johnson, the old dog walking erratically toward the Radley Place. In the rabies-infected dog, two symbols are combined: on the one hand the well-known Tim Johnson, “the pet of Maycomb” (
TKAM
105); on the other hand, a mortal danger to any warm-blooded being that crosses his path.

The slow movement of the dog and the way in which Scout rarely describes the dog's behavior itself—she only does so for fourteen sentences in the entire chapter—focusing instead on the reaction his behavior provokes in Jem, Calpurnia, the neighborhood, Heck, and Atticus, increases the symbolic stature of the animal. As with the Albatross in Coleridge's
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
, it is not so much the dog itself, or even the disease he carries, that strikes fear in men's hearts; it is the fact that death itself is in sight. Thus Jem's squinting takes on added significance: “We had gone about five hundred yards beyond the Radley Place when I noticed Jem squinting at something down the street. He had turned his head to one side and was looking out of the corners of his eyes” (
TKAM
105). “Looking out of the corners of his eyes” may even imply that he considered Tim Johnson as some sort of canine Medusa, which even the tough and cool Jem would not dare look at directly.

The reactions of the adults are even more disturbing. Calpurnia's easy dismissal of Jem's concerns seems to dissipate when he relates what disturbed him so much about Tim Johnson's behavior. In fact, it is not until Calpurnia sees Tim Johnson with her own eyes that the fear grips her: “Calpurnia stared, then grabbed us by the shoulders and ran us home. She shut the wood door behind us, went to the telephone and shouted “Gimme Mr. Finch's office!” (
TKAM
106). The immediacy of her response, getting the children out of harm's way and referring the case up to a higher authority, shows just how great her fear of rabies is. Her further actions—shouting at Atticus; talking back to Miss Eula May, the operator; yelling at Scout and Jem; and running over to warn the Radleys of the approaching threat—also demonstrate how truly panicked she is. Similarly, the back and forth between Heck Tate and Atticus about who is going to shoot the dog is highly disturbing. These two towering figures of authority in Scout's narrative are both scared of shooting an old dog. That none of this fear disappears with Tim Johnson's death, as seen in the warnings of Atticus and Zeebo (TKAM 112), makes the diseased dog all the more ominous.

The classic suspense building structure of this chapter, in which description of the response to the danger take precedence over descriptions of the danger itself, is intended to increase the reader's emotional reaction to the episode. Yet by continuing to focus on the response of the neighborhood rather than on the danger they all face, Scout uses a narrative style that at first serves to heighten the tension and then is equally important in dispelling it. The bickering between Miss Maudie and Miss Stephanie that follows the violence and the wicked fun Miss Maudie has in informing Atticus's children of his prowess with a gun serve to reduce a truly frightening episode into just another specimen of Maycomb lore. The symbolic quality of the lone dog confronted by the Law, in the figure of Atticus who takes over when the authorities fail to take responsibility, is thus minimized and reduced to an episode that is merely illustrative of the Finches' Social Conscience Streak. Aunt Alexandra would be proud.

Part 1, chapter 10, then, creates two symbols. First, it depicts the portrayal of Atticus as the Southern gentleman, the title bestowed upon him by his son, an almost Homeric epithet, which endows him with a whole range of heroic qualities. Second, the mad dog Tim Johnson is a sinister reminder of the death, fear, and panic to come. Like Tim Johnson, the town of Maycomb will seem to be moving toward death and destruction, urged on by an invisible force it cannot ignore, nor yet recognize. Ultimately, this episode sets up the coming battle for the soul of Maycomb as a mythical battle between an Homeric hero and the unstoppable force of prejudice and racism. For all the deflating gesturing at the end of the chapter, the image that remains is that of Atticus, standing in the road, waiting for Tim Johnson to move.