In Harper Lees Novels a Loss of Innocence as Children and Again as Adults
An Appraisal
In Harper Lee'due south Novels, a Loss of Innocence equally Children and Over again every bit Adults
Harper Lee will forever be remembered for her 1960 classic "To Impale a Mockingbird" — a novel that became a staple of middle-school curriculums, and for several generations of readers, a coming-of-historic period story that spoke to their ain losses of childhood innocence.
As embodied by Gregory Peck in the film adaptation, Atticus Finch was an iconic hero: not merely a devoted father to his ii motherless children Watch and Jem, but besides a symbol of decency, compassion and award. Fans named their children later on him, or went to police school considering they admired his idealistic determination to defend a black human falsely accused of raping a white adult female in the Depression-era South. More skeptical readers and moviegoers detected something patronizing in a liberal white lawyer riding to the rescue of a poor, uneducated black human who was cast in the function of innocent, but passive, victim.
Paradigm
Debates over "Mockingbird" took off last summer with the publication of an early version of that novel, "Go Ready a Watchman," in which Atticus, shockingly, emerges equally a bigot and segregationist. The publication of "Watchman" — in the midst of debates over police violence, the Amalgamated battle flag and the Black Lives Matter movement — was also a reminder of how closely associated "Mockingbird" was, in many older readers' minds, with the civil rights movement of the 1960s and how it had become part of the national dialogue about race and justice.
Does the publication of "Watchman" alter how nosotros read "Mockingbird"? Does it change Ms. Lee'southward legacy and reputation as a writer? Ms. Lee's ii novels both concern the loss of illusions, and public reaction to her books provide a window on America'due south slow, stumbling efforts to grapple with racial inequality. They also enhance important questions about the dynamic between fiction and history, and how we assess works of art from earlier eras — whether by the standards of the times in which they were written or through the prism of our values today.
Whereas "Mockingbird" was gear up in the 1930s and was seen through the optics of Lookout every bit a daughter (she is nearly 6 when that novel begins), "Watchman" takes identify in the 1950s effectually the time of the Brown v. Board of Educational activity determination and depicts an adult Sentinel's dismay when she returns to Alabama from New York Metropolis for a visit and is forced to reckon with her father's ugly views on race. Readers of "Mockingbird," who remembered Atticus equally an idealistic progressive, could non assistance but share Scout's trauma: We, as well, were shocked and dismayed to learn that Atticus was first conceived as an opponent of integration, who said things like "the Negroes downwards here are still in their childhood as a people" and asks Scout if she wants "Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters?"
Unlike as the two novels are, they both adjure to Ms. Lee'due south professed ambition to exist "the Jane Austen of South Alabama" — her eye for small, telling details; her ear for small-town churr (and the emotional subtext below), and her natural storytelling instincts. "Mockingbird" reflects the astute advice of Ms. Lee's editor to move the story back two decades and to focus on Scout'southward girlhood. And it's a more polished and mature performance: The language is looser and more poetic, and the crucial decision to make Scout the narrator results in a voice that possesses both immediacy and retrospective wisdom, evoking, in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie'due south words, the universal "mysteries of babyhood." Compared with the picture version, "Mockingbird" the novel spends less time on the trial of Tom Robinson and more on conjuring the solar day-to-24-hour interval rhythms of small-town life — in ways more reminiscent of Austen or Barbara Pym than many of Ms. Lee's fellow Southern writers. Information technology captures the intertwined relationships of residents in this hermetic world, as seen from the unfiltered betoken of view of a feisty and precocious girl — easily one of the almost memorable children in contemporary American literature.
The devastation of innocence (symbolized in the first volume by the mockingbird and its two innocent characters, the falsely accused Tom Robinson, and the ostracized neighbor Boo Radley) is the primal theme running through both Ms. Lee'southward novels. In "Mockingbird," Watch and her older brother Jem are disillusioned, every bit children, to learn that it'southward hard, if not impossible, for a black man to receive a fair trial, despite their father's best efforts as a defense lawyer. In "Watchman," a grown-up Scout is sickened past the discrimination of her begetter, who one time attended a Klan meeting and holds deeply segregationist views.
Instead of standing up to the ignorant bigots in town, the Atticus in "Watchman" shares many of their worst prejudices. And the boondocks of Maycomb, Ala., in "Watchman" is depicted in considerably rawer, more than alarming terms, besides — as a community peopled with roughshod haters who use the ugliest, well-nigh racist language; and small-minded provincials, driven by feelings of superiority and privilege.
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So, somewhere along the way, Harper Lee'due south approach toward her material — and the Atticus effigy, in particular — changed. From an indictment of the small-town South, she moved toward what she called "a plea for something," a reminder to "people at home" of their humanity and the need for empathy for all people, no matter their color.
For some readers, these changes meant that Ms. Lee had whitewashed the past in "Mockingbird," creating a phony, idealized portrait of the small-town Due south that suggested racism was largely bars to a few ignorant haters. Other readers proceed to cherish the redemptive elements in "Mockingbird" and regard the differences betwixt the books every bit a fascinating case study in the mysteries of rewriting and an author finding her groove (with a large assistance from an editor): how a lumpy legend about a immature adult female'southward grief over her discovery of her father's bigoted views evolved into a classic coming-of-age story and the tale of a fight for justice.
The differences between the two books likewise underscore the consequence that fourth dimension has on how stories are told — and read. Depicting the distressing state of civil rights during the Depression, "Mockingbird" both allowed readers in the 1960s to congratulate themselves on how far race relations had progressed and gave members of the civil rights movement a sense, as Andrew Young once put information technology, of an "emerging humanism and decency."
"Watchman," in contrast, was both gear up in the 1950s and written then, and it underscored merely how horrific race relations and social justice were. Read now, it even shows the novel'south heroine, the idealistic Lookout, as a captive of her time, telling her male parent that she knows modify and equality have "got to exist boring."
In such respects, Ms. Lee has given united states, in her two published novels, documents that allow us to measure how times and attitudes about race have changed, and — given standing injustices today — how terribly far we accept yet to go.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/books/in-harper-lees-novels-a-loss-of-innocence-as-children-and-again-as-adults.html
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