Rest in peace, Harper Lee.
To Kill a Mockingbird is in the upper echelon of American novels, one of the books widely taught in American schools that allows me to continue to hope for the future of public education. It was a runaway success because Lee was able to take a serious literary concept and made it optimistic and accessible to the general population. This is no mean feat. If it were easy, all literary giants would be billionaires. We all know how that is working out.
In Mockingbird, Lee had something important to say and found a nation of readers that wanted and needed to hear it. She made her statement in a succinct and entertaining fashion. Rarely do literary writers combine a crowd-pleasing, popular style with a timely and important message, and Harper Lee was able to do that.
Her great achievement was to be the right writer at the right time. An accomplishment, indeed.
A year ago my daughter had to write a paper about To Kill a Mockingbird for school, and since I had forgotten a lot of the details, I re-read the chapter where Atticus shoots the rabid dog. I had forgotten how tightly woven and concise Harper Lee was, her writing as clear and concentrated as nectar. In that chapter, a rabid dog is loose in town, and several citizens get together to draft Atticus to shoot it, knowing Atticus had the reputation of being the best shot in town. Atticus was reluctant to do the job because he had so carefully taught his own children to reject violence and didn't want them to see that he was an expert at a violent skill.
But in the end, Atticus shot the dog because the job had to be done and he was the best candidate to do it. Rather than turn away, he faced the duty, and did so with dignity and compassion. Scout understood this to mean that violence should be avoided, but when it cannot, violent power is best wielded with compassion, skill, and good judgment. If you are going to do a nasty job, do it right.
A great chapter and a great novel. And as it true with all great novels, it was even more of a pleasure sharing it with my daughter than it was reading it myself.
Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "Your father’s right," she said. "Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird