Words Inspired by To Kill A Mockingbird.

(Not quite a review.)

It has no doubt crossed the minds of my readers and myself alike as to why I preoccupy myself with writing book reviews.  This can be answered in several different ways, but there are three main reasons: The first being that my life, although not completely dull, does involve intense novel reading as a large portion of it.  The second is merely to entertain, and the last is this: I have a hard time remembering the novels I read, and if ever asked my opinion on a book that I read several years ago, I want something to look back on to refresh my memory.

My memory has failed me in recent years, and I haven't yet figured out if this is simply the human condition or a peculiarity of my mind.  Childhood vacations are snapshots of going up the Saint Louis Arch and feeding a killer whale.  My trip to Japan a month ago is hazing into multi-voweled cities and blurs of temples.  I have read The Scarlet Letter, The Grapes of Wrath, and Les Misrerables back in high school, but I barely remember any of them.  (Although I can tell you with perfect clarity that the end scene of The Grapes of Wrath is an old man sucking on a new mother's breast.  Symbolism.)

Besides my failing memory, I have also encountered the literature lover's dilemma of quality versus quantity.  Do I spend my years revisiting old works to know them more fully, or do I expand my repertoire to be considered well read?  I think the answer is somewhere in the middle.  C.S. Lewis once said that "It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones."  It was with this mindset that I began revisiting To Kill A Mockingbird. 

One of the curious things about revisiting an old work is that memories of your first encounter with the novel shape as you go along.  The first time I read TKAM was my sophomore year of high school.  Mr. Wiegel, who I was determined not to enjoy as a teacher, became my favorite and an English inspiration.  I remember realizing about forty pages into the novel that Scout was actually a girl, and, according to Wiegel, that Little Chuck Little was one of the best minor characters in American Literature.

What makes To Kill A Mockingbird great, what makes it added to every "You should read these books before you die" list is, in part, it's socio-economic critique about America in the '30s.  That part is very straightforward, and, to my dismay, made one of my coworkers call the novel, "preachy." (When I mentioned that the court case only took up about a third of the novel, he did agree and say that, "most of the book was about the two boys.")

But in essence, what makes the novel so good, and what makes many novels so good is an author's ability to tell a story.  There is a reason that TKAM is taught in high school English courses instead of analyzed vigorously in college classrooms.  It is because it's symbolism is obvious, there are barely any mysteries that cannot be grasped by the teenage mind, and it is an easily-written work.  It is simply a picture of America.

At times I found the simpleness of the novel frustrating.  "Harper Lee, do you really need to spell out for us that the mockingbird is both Tom Robinson and Boo Radley?" is what I found myself thinking.  The book is, however, written through the lens of a 6-9 year old girl, so the lack of complexities in the plot add to Scout's voice.  As Atticus tucked Scout into bed in the last pages of the novel, I was left with a similar feeling of tucked-in-ness. 

Should I say, "It felt like the whole tale was one big bedtime story?"  I can't figure out a better way to put it.  Despite all of the social injustice that raged throughout the novel, we are left with Atticus simply stating that :most people are nice when we finally see them."  If held to a high-brow literary standard, this ending may seem ridiculous in it's blatant hammering of the theme.  If recognized as a life lesson on equality as explained to a child, our narrator, the ending is perfect.