Southern discomfort

I had the chance last week to browse about the Saugatuck library sans kids. A rare alignment of the stars permitted this to happen, so I took advantage.

I was looking for another book to read, so I wandered the fiction area looking for the EarthSea Trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin but came up empty. I did, though, come across Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." I hadn't read the book since the ninth (or 10th) grade and I figured age would give me a new appreciation for the book. I was right.

Questions

If I recall, the book I read in school was abridged and didn't much use the word "nigger," but I could be wrong. That was a shame, because the use of the word is key in the novel. Scout and Jem stop using it once they realize it's a demeaning term. The transformation is subtle but has impact.

The scene where Atticus shoots the rabid dog (the photo above is of Gregory Peck in the film -- a great work! -- from that scene) holds great weight with me as well. As is brought up by the kids, Atticus can use violence -- and effectively -- to solve his problems, but he doesn't. And, of course, he shoots the jays (Bob Ewell) but leaves the mockingbird (Boo Radley) alone.

I had forgotten the morbid humor of the closing scenes: Scout in a homemade ham costume being attacked by Bob Ewell. Funny but sickening just the same. Just like pork.

The novel left me with several questions -- the kind you can't really answer. But here are three that might have answers:

1: Is "To Kill a Mockingbird" the great American novel? I find it more meaningful than "The Great Gadsby" and certainly more approachable than "Moby Dick." Not sure about the Mark Twain thing. But, alas, I've wasted my youth reading Victorian novels, so my knowledge of American writers is limitted.

2: Is Atticus Finch a good father? He worries about this in the book, about leaving a meaningful legacy for his children. That creates the conflict about whether to tell the truth about Arthur "Boo" Radley killing Bob Ewell or following the sheriff's plan of saying Ewell fell on his knife.

Also, Atticus lets his kids roam about unattended for almost entire days. Would a good father do that?

Atticus also puts a lot of emphasis on being in another man's shoes. This works well, especially with Jem and the neighbor with the morphine addiction, but does he go too far? He misjudged Ewell and his ability to harm Scout and Jem. He misjudged Tom Robinson and his desire to escape. Both had deadly results.

3: Is racism still around? I can say yes -- ask any black or Hispanic man who drives a car in Holland. He's probably been pulled over at five times the rate of white people. Ask a black, Hispanic or Asian person who goes to court and you'll probably find they get a harsher sentence than a white person. But is this racism as heavy as in the novel? More pervasive, more evil? Or just different?

Thought:

"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things ... Atticus, he was real nice ..."

"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."