To Kill a Mockingbird

I just finished reading To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, this was my fifth time reading the book and, as with all great books, it was just as impressive and notable as each previous immersion into the world of Jem, Scout, Boo Radley, and of course Atticus.

My main grievance with the book is not found within its dog-eared and ramshackle pages, I have read the same copy four times so it’s a little worse for wear, but in the way that it is taught by high school teachers the world round and the way people scrutinize the book. To Kill a Mockingbird is not a civil rights book this is a book about a subject lost in our day and I dare say the most important subject of our day, what it means to be a man. Everything else in the book is a vehicle used by the author to get us to that point: shooting the dog, the trial, the night on the jail house steps, Tom Robinson, and Boo Radley, these are simply the tools used by Harper Lee to tell us what it means to be a man to show us how a man should behave, act, feel, and carry himself. Does the author make poignant and appropriate points regarding race? Of course she does, but in its heart it is a story written by a woman who loved her father. And when one reads it in this light and context it is a beautiful-simple book with a clear message but when read as a civil rights book the message gets muddled and murky, you’re left feeling sorry for the black cause in the depression era south instead of celebrating the fact that there are great men in the world like Atticus Finch.

A brief glimpse of the world through the eyes of Atticus Finch:
“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do”