I am one of the millions of people worldwide who say To Kill A Mockingbird is their favourite book. Every attempt at originality on my part is trumped by the enduring brilliance of Harper Lee’s acclaimed work. Part of Mockingbird’s appeal is its unassuming character – there’s something a little contradictory about a universally beloved novel whose intricacies are so deeply personal to the author. I reread it every summer, and every summer I am welcomed back by Scout Finch, Lee’s semi-autobiographical protagonist, the daughter of Atticus Finch, and the girl who acts as a window into the world of Maycomb. With Lee’s death we have lost perhaps the most significant author of the 20th century. But we have lost the people and the place of To Kill A Mockingbird too. There has never been a better time to remind ourselves of what we learned from Scout Finch.
1. You can’t understand someone until you walk around in their shoes
This one’s a big one – and it takes until the final pages of Mockingbird for Scout to formally reveal this pearl of wisdom. Atticus has of course been hinting at it for the whole novel, but it is only when Scout literally stands where Boo Radley has stood that she can conceive of the possibility that she doesn’t really understand him. All she knows is that she has prejudged him, and all along she should have focussed on his benevolent actions. We can forgive her of course, because we have all done this before – she teaches us that our preconceptions are of little worth when compared to what we see before us.
2. It takes some skill to be a girl
Scout doesn’t want to be a conventional girl, and another of Mockingbird’s lessons is that you don’t need to be. That said, Scout’s revelation that it really does take some skill to be a girl is particularly didactic. Lee is prophetic, and I’ve often thought that the issues of gender explored in Mockingbird don’t get enough airtime. Calpurnia, the Finch’s black housekeeper, is ridiculously accomplished given the social context. Even Aunt Alexandra, Scout allows, shows remarkable ability to both act as a matriarch and adhere to the constraints of femininity. Scout prefers male company because she says it’s simpler, and there’s less hypocrisy involved, but she definitely makes us see that being a girl takes a lot of talent.
3. Everyone’s got to grow up sometime
The world of adults, according to Jem and Scout, isn’t that great. Jem particularly loses all faith in the grown-up justice system when Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape, is found guilty despite a (relatively) fair trial. But a huge part of Mockingbird’s moral message is about Scout and Jem accepting the burden they’ve inherited from the previous generation. Particularly, learning to live in a world that prizes the Ewells’ white skin over Tom Robinson’s innocence. Yet growing up doesn’t mean giving up, it means fighting in a different way – so Scout must stop fighting in the school-yard and get used to challenging her opponents through more civilised means. Childhood innocence shouldn’t be left behind altogether though. For example, Scout helps saves Tom from the Maycomb lynch mob when she asks Mr Cunnigham how his son is – the Cunningham’s are ‘dirt poor’ and very publcily so. She is naively unaware of the social stigma that might prevent an adult from asking after a Cunningham. Adulthood, but in moderation, is the best course.
4. One must lie under certain circumstances
Maycomb is a tense and easily riled place, fraught with both the polite neighbourly conflict and the oppressive heat of segregated Alabama. Maycomb-ites sometimes should not be burdened with the truth, as it can be more destructive than revelatory. For Scout this is not admitting her true feelings about the ladies of Maycomb, and for Atticus this is proclaiming ignorance of Boo Radley’s part in Bob Ewell’s death. For a moralistic story, Mockingbird is also surprisingly relativist. This is tied to Scout’s reflections about growing up. She must also learn to refrain from truth-telling in some circumstances, and ‘at all times when one can do nothing about them’. In a world so unjust as that of Lee’s Maycomb, lying is the smallest of sins and is often well-intentioned. We learn from Scout that the way forward is not always clear, but also that sometimes the truth must be sacrificed to protect that which we value more.
Harper Lee’s life was a quiet one, despite how much she revealed about her own childhood through To Kill A Mockingbird, and subsequently Go Set A Watchmen. Monroeville, where she was born and which acted as the inspiration for Maycomb, is now also where she is buried. Our remaining questions about the Finches and Maycomb will go unanswered. But To Kill A Mockingbird is a classic that is distinct from its counterparts. It’s lessons are continually relevant, and every summer when I go back to Maycomb I learn another. Yet despite it’s distinctiveness it shares one important characteristic with every other revered piece of literature; its story will endure long after it’s creator’s death.