A few months ago I gave a chapel presentation on To Kill a Mockingbird, just for the fun of it. Actually, I gave two presentations. They have just now been made available online, which is why I'm mentioning them.
In this first presentation, I talk about whether we should take seriously Atticus Finch as a moral person. I say in the presentation that I have read no critical engagement with the novel or movie, except for the movie review by Roger Ebert (here). But that is no longer true. After my first presentation on the novel/film, someone handed me a copy of Joseph Crespino's 2018 book on Atticus Finch, which I read during the week between the two chapel presentations. In the text of my first speech that I present below, there are adaptations based on my reading of Crespino.
One of the signicant changes between the chapel talk and the text below is what I learned about the evaluation of Atticus Finch by Martin Luther King Jr. (But this change apparently — according to my notes below — came about through my colleague Brad McKinnon rather than through reading Crespino.) I am glad to say that my intuition about what King probably thought about Atticus was basically confirmed.
Here's the chapel talk (delivered in perhaps September 2024).
And here's the revised text of this speech.
If you want to get to know Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose of Maycomb, Alabama, you are better off reading To Kill a Mockingbird than watching the movie. In the film, Mrs. Dubose, played by Ruth White, barely appears on screen; we see just a brief glimpse of her sitting on her front porch, reprimanding Scout and Jem as they walk down the street, along with Dill. They are on their way to meet Atticus as he is coming home from work. As she walks by, Scout hollers, “Hey, Mrs. Dubose.” To which Mrs. Dubose immediately replies, “Don’t you say ‘hey’ to me, you ugly girl. You say, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose.’” Atticus then stops to talk to Mrs. Dubose, saying that her flowers are the grandest in the county and that she herself looks like a picture. As Scout whispers to Dill behind Atticus’ back, “he don’t say a picture of what.” In the movie, Mrs. Dubose appears as a cantankerous old woman who doesn’t like kids, but her brief appearance merely adds a little color to this fictional Alabama town.*
*Further scenes with Mrs. Dubose were filmed but did not make the final cut of the film; see Crespino, Atticus Finch, 138–39.
In the novel, it is the same, only more so. The scene I have just described from the movie corresponds nearly word-for-word to material in the novel, but the novel allots to Mrs. Dubose most of an entire chapter, and at the end of this chapter, Atticus offers a startling evaluation of her life: “She was the bravest person I ever knew.” That judgment from Atticus stands in some tension with the depiction of Mrs. Dubose in the novel, in which she comes across mostly as mean, hateful, and racist—not least, mean and hateful toward the Finch family, especially Atticus himself. So what can Atticus mean by paying her such a high compliment?
In my view, the opinion of Atticus Finch is worth pondering not only because he is the moral touchstone in To Kill a Mockingbird, but because the way his character is drawn in the novel has proven so moving and compelling to so many readers. Just go to the novel’s Wikipedia page and read about how many people have decided to study law so that they could do good in their communities like Atticus Finch. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those novels that has instilled within readers hope and determination to make the world a better place, and Atticus is probably the driving force behind this hope and determination. His judgments have weight in the fictional world of the text and even more so in the real world outside the text. What I’m trying to say is that To Kill a Mockingbird is a morally serious novel, and Atticus is a morally serious character. If this evaluation is correct, then reflecting on Atticus Finch should help us to grow in our morality. Even if we think the novel is not all it’s cracked up to be, still it has been influential on the ethical thinking of a great number of Americans, making it a worthy conversation partner for our own ethical reasoning.
Let me talk about the book and the movie.* And I will admit that I have read no reviews of either, except for one movie review, which I will mention in a moment, so I am basing my comments on my own reading and reviewing, not on what others have said—though I’m sure I could learn a lot from listening to others.
*On the differences between the film and novel, especially in their depictions of Atticus, see Crespino, Atticus Finch, 129, 136–39, 144–48. “Harper Lee adored the movie” (Crespino, 148).
I read the book first in my early twenties, I guess, so about 20-25 years ago, and then I read it a second time just a few months ago. When I read it the first time, I was astonished and captivated. I felt it clearly deserved its reputation as perhaps the greatest American novel of the twentieth century. I still feel that way, although I am somewhat less captivated than I once was. That may be because of who I am now that I am in my mid-40s and have taught academic courses for nearly twenty years and have been an active and publishing scholar for most of that time. Maybe I have so trained myself to read critically that I’m less susceptible to the charms of fiction, less willing to be captivated. If that’s the case, it bums me out a little. Another reason I was less captivated may have been simply that it was my second time through. Probably the biggest reason, though, is that I have kids; I don’t have the luxury at this stage of my life to get lost in a make-believe world—there are things to do, kids that demand attention.
But there’s another reason I want to mention that may have prevented me from being so captivated by the novel: I am more aware now of our nation’s history and of our current moment, more conscious of the history of racism and the complexities involved. I read the novel wondering what different groups in the 21st century would think about it, wondering about the representation of race issues in 1930s Alabama by a white female author, wondering to what extent these were credible depictions of human beings, wondering whether the actions of any of them are worthy of admiration. In short, I was wondering whether people today find the novel problematic, and, if so, whether they are right to make such a judgment. I do find it difficult to think through how we ought to judge people from another time and place. And judging someone like Atticus Finch is difficult partly because, well, he’s a fictional character in a fictional town set in the 1930s but created in the 1960s and now being discussed in the 2020s. Nuance is key; no hot takes.
Not everyone thinks the novel deserves its reputation. An example is Roger Ebert, the revered movie critic who passed away in 2013. Now whenever you want help thinking about a movie made in the last decades of the twentieth century or the first decade of the 21st, you should check out what Roger Ebert has to say about it. Of course, he’s only offering his opinion, but I find his criticisms almost always helpful. He himself is a morally serious critic, highly intelligent and thoughtful. When the film To Kill a Mockingbird was released in 1962, he was not yet regularly publishing movie reviews, but apparently there was a re-release of the movie in 2001, because the review you can find at his website carries that date. He did not much care for the film—he gave it 2 ½ stars out of four—and he seems to have liked the novel only slightly more.
In his movie review, he says about the novel: “It is a beautifully-written book, but it should be used not as a record of how things are, or were, but of how we once liked to think of them.” I find that curious. Roger Ebert read To Kill a Mockingbird and discerned that the novel was about how we once liked to think about things. I find this difficult. I want to take Ebert seriously but I seriously do not understand what he is getting at. Does he really think that anyone would watch that movie or read that book and exclaim, “Ah, the good old days!” It’s such a preposterous idea that I feel I must be misunderstanding Ebert’s criticism. The first line of his movie review says that the film preserves “hopes and sentiments from a kinder, gentler, more naive America.” Does he mean the 1930s or the 1960s? It hardly matters. I cannot fathom an interpretation of the movie or the novel such that the society depicted is kinder and gentler.
That this is what Ebert means to say is suggested by the conclusion of his review, when he depicts the wonderful scene in which a mob gathers at the courthouse to attempt a lynching, only to be met by Atticus and, eventually, Atticus’ children, who succeed in making the crowd ashamed of the actions they had gathered to perform. Ebert says—and these are the final words of his review—“Could a child turn away a lynch mob at that time, in that place? Isn’t it nice to think so.” Look, I also wonder about how credible that scene is. And Ebert is right: I would like to think that a child could turn away a lynch mob.* But that one scene does not define the entire movie, certainly not the entire novel. I think I could defend the credibility of the scene, but let us say that the scene is wishful thinking on the part of Harper Lee. Nevertheless, it is nonsense to say that the novel as a whole is wishful thinking on the part of Harper Lee, as if she were engaging in some sort of Lost Cause narrative, as if the point of the novel were to make readers nostalgic for the 1930s. I say such a reading is nonsense. The entire novel is a lament about the nature of the society in which those children were being raised, a lament about the roles assigned to different people in that society, and how hard it is, and mostly hopeless, to stand against the roles assigned to you. Atticus Finch stood apart from his assigned role—maybe not so far apart from it as he should have, but somewhat apart from it—and he went in to his fight against society’s rules knowing that he would lose, and he did lose, and he fought anyway, explicitly hoping to provide a good example to others.
*Crespino, Atticus Finch, 118–19, calls the scene “an absurdity,” but then he relates the idea of a child facing down a lynch mob to what was happening in the late 1950s with Black children integrating schools despite the white mobs screaming at them.
But how noble is Atticus?* If you told Harper Lee that Atticus was not in fact the hero that readers and viewers have made him out to be, she’d probably respond by saying that if Atticus weren’t a fictional character, he’d be the first one to agree with your assessment. He didn’t think of himself as a hero. If you were able to walk onto that front porch in Maycomb and sit down on the swing next to Atticus, and you told him that you thought he could be doing more for justice in his town, how do you think he’d respond? I imagine he would say, “I’m confident that you’re correct. Tell me what you have in mind.” And then after patiently listening to you, he would respond, “Those are some marvelous ideas. Do you really think my implementing those policies would result in a more just community? I wonder.”
*For a real-life example, consider Reverend Ray Whatley, one-time minister of the Methodist church in Monroeville which claimed the Lee family as members. “Yet it must be said, though Harper Lee herself never seemed to recognize it, that Ray Whatley was a genuine, true-life example of the heroic figure that Mockingbird would eventually evoke to such everlasting fame: the principled white southerner who made a public stand for racial decency and fairness and suffered because of it” (Crespino, Atticus Finch, 68, and see further, pp. 64–69).
Instead of disparaging someone for taking a stand that we think not bold enough even though we ourselves have rarely taken so bold a stand, and even though he himself took his stand upon threat to his personal safety and that of his children, perhaps we should reflect on the different ways in which people can contribute to justice. Would that we had more competent criminal defense attorneys who dealt honestly and courageously with their clients even when they knew they’d lose their case.
Now let me say that some of the criticisms Ebert raises are criticisms that I share, and that bothered me before reading Ebert’s review—not only the scene where Scout turns away a lynch mob, but even more the scene in which Atticus learns about the death of Tom Robinson. These are the segments that strike me as perhaps incredible. I just don’t think they add up to the total case that Ebert is promoting, that the movie and the novel are a product of wishful thinking; it’s not a wish, it’s a lament. And, again, the reason that it’s Ebert that I am critiquing is that I think he’s worth engaging; I value his writing and opinions. Also, his is the only review of To Kill a Mockingbird I’ve read. But, anyway, I have a criticism of the novel and movie that Ebert does not mention: all the Black characters are noble. There’s little nuance to their characterization, making them somewhat unbelievable. But in terms of moral seriousness, such a depiction of Black characters in a novel in 1960 is probably not as significant of a fault as it would be at the quarter mark of the 21st century. (Compare Moberly's take on Von Rad's take on Genesis 12:3 in the context of Nazi Germany.)
I can’t help but wonder whether an 18-year-old Ebert reading To Kill a Mockingbird in the year of its publication would have considered it bold and courageous and a revelation, a worthy recipient of that year’s Pulitzer, and a helpful contribution to justice—whereas a sixty-year-old Ebert, reading the novel and seeing the movie forty years after their initial release considers them inadequate. As the German New Testament scholar Walter Bauer wrote in 1934 (p. xxii), “What constitutes ‘truth’ in one generation can be out of date in the next.”
It was different for civil rights leaders in the 1960s, contemporary with the novel’s release. They viewed Atticus Finch as an ally. At least, Martin Luther King Jr. did. He mentions Atticus in his 1964 book Why We Can’t Wait. Specifically he mentions that scene that both Ebert and I find dubious, but King offers no criticism of the scene but holds it up as an example of what he himself is striving to represent.
Atticus Finch, a white southern lawyer, confronts a group of his neighbors who have become a lynch-crazed mob, seeking the life of his Negro client. Finch, armed with nothing more lethal than a lawbook, disperses the mob with the force of his moral courage, aided by his small daughter, who, innocently calling the would-be lynchers by name, reminds them that they are individual men, not a pack of beasts.
To the Negro in 1963, as to Atticus Finch, it had become obvious that nonviolence could symbolize the gold badge of heroism rather than the white feather of cowardice. In addition to being consistent with his religious precepts, it served his need to act on his own for his own liberation. It enabled him to transmute hatred into constructive energy, to seek not only to free himself but to free his oppressor from his sins. This transformation, in turn, had the marvelous effect of changing the face of the enemy. The enemy the Negro faced became not the individual who had oppressed him but the evil system which permitted that individual to do so.
The argument that nonviolence is a coward’s refuge lost its force as its heroic and often perilous acts uttered their wordless but convincing rebuttal in Montgomery, in the sit-ins, on the freedom rides, and finally in Birmingham.*
*Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (1964; repr.: New York: Signet, 2000), 24. This passage appears in ch. 2, “The Sword that Heals,” §3. I appreciate my colleague, Brad McKinnon, for directing me to this passage.
At the end of that excerpt, King transitions from Atticus to his own movement in 1960s Alabama. King presents Atticus as a model. But, it should be noted, that King presents Atticus as a model not in terms of race relations but in terms of nonviolence. Did MLK think that Atticus provided a good model for other white southerners with regard to race issues? He did not say.
Neither did Malcolm X, as far as I know, but I feel pretty confident that he would have felt that way—or, at least, he would have near the end of his life. If you’ve read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, you may remember the white college girl who asks Malcolm X what she can do to help his movement. This scene is in chapter 15, and it’s also briefly depicted in Spike Lee’s film with Denzel Washington. To this white girl’s question, Malcolm X replies, “Nothing.” It’s an amazing encounter, one that Malcolm X would come to regret. In chapter 19, Malcolm X mentions this white girl again, and how he wished he could talk to her and tell her how, in fact, she could help his movement, by working among other white people to stamp out racist attitudes.
So let me speculate. What if Harper Lee had been that white college girl (of course, she was not), and what if Malcolm X agreed to have a conversation with her, in which she revealed that she was a budding novelist. What would he have advised her to do? Mightn’t he have told her to write a novel in which the main character is a white man in Alabama who stands opposed to the racist attitudes surrounding him. This man leads no demonstrations, would probably say that he’s too old for marches, but he lives a simple and quiet life and when the issue of race comes to him, he takes a firm stand on the side of justice, and he raises his children to do the same. It seems to me that such may well have been the advice from Malcolm X, or from MLK. And it seems to me that Harper Lee did just that, in such a brilliant way that her admittedly imperfect novel has inspired a couple of generations to live more justly and at peace with one another.*
*For an account of Harper Lee’s ambitions with Mockingbird along the lines that Malcolm X suggested for the white college girl (but without mentioning Malcolm X), see Crespino, Atticus Finch, 112–13.
I have spent all my time defending a reading of To Kill a Mockingbird and the moral seriousness of the novel and of Atticus Finch that I don’t have time to talk about Mrs. Dubose. Next time. More troublesome, I have not mentioned Scripture at all, so let me end today by reminding you of Matthew 7:1, where our Lord said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” I’m not sure how far to press these words of Jesus, in what all situations they apply, but I do know that he was warning us from measuring people’s worth, their virtue, with a stricter standard than we apply to ourselves. It should probably be just the reverse. Or as Atticus told Scout early in the novel (near the end of ch. 3), “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
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