NewView Clarity in Harper Lee’s Novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird”
Students who are assigned to write essays will usually be asked to write an essay, not just a report, on a piece of literature, such as a novel.
The following discussion should help everyone to write essays about novels, generally, and about Harper Lee’s extraordinary novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, in particular.
Every story, whether it’s a short story or a long one called a novel, always has three things:
- an OldView strong value statement, at the beginning
- support or undercutting of the OldView, in the middle
- a NewView Reverse of the OldView, at the end
1–OldView. In Harper Lee’s novel, there are many stories—legends or myths, actually—around the neighborhood and about the town featuring Boo Radley as some sort of monster. Because of those myths, Jem and Scout are afraid Boo will kill them, even though they are so curious about him that they want him to come out so they can see him:
Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock on the front door…‘I hope you’ve got it through your head that he’ll kill us each and every one, Dill Harris,’ said Jem, when we joined him. ‘Don’t blame me when he gouges your eyes out. You started it, remember.’
‘You’re still scared,’ murmured Dill patiently…’You gonna run out on a dare?’ (pp. 16-17)
That strong OldView statement of fearful consequences keeps coming up in the story. Jem and Scout and Dill often refer to and remind each other of the probability that Boo Radley will kill them all if he ever does come out of his house.
2–Support. Foils. The most obvious foils are Jem and Scout to each other, and each of them to their father, Atticus. A little less obvious is Dill as a foil or contrast to each of them, particularly when Dill dares Jem early on in the story to go up to the Radley house, as shown in the OldView strong value statement, above.
Of course, there are many other foils in the story, too:
- Atticus versus the jury of townspeople who convicted Tom Robinson, a Negro, of rape on no evidence at all except the accusation of a white woman
- the Cunninghams versus the Ewells
- Aunt Alexandra versus Atticus
- Sheriff Heck Tate versus Atticus
- Miss Maudie Atkinson versus Miss Stephanie Crawford
- Atticus versus Boo Radley
- Boo Radley versus Tom Robinson
All these foil relationships can be viewed as subsets of the main foils of Jem and Scout versus their father, Atticus. That relationship provides the main stage within the story for discussing prejudice and bigotry in many of its ugly forms.
Conflicts & Resolutions. To further prove to Scout and Dill that he’s not afraid of Boo Radley, Jem concocts the idea of making a play drama about the Radleys, right there in the Finch’s front yard, where everyone in the neighborhood can see it. They realize that Atticus would disapprove of their play, so they stop their play whenever he is near enough to see it, or when anyone comes by on their street.
However, Atticus unexpectedly came home at noon one day and asked them if what they were doing had anything to do with the Radleys, which Jem denied. As a result, the kids “slowed down the game for a while” and their playing the Radley game is not mentioned again in the book.
Of course, there are many other conflicts and resolutions in the story, but the conflict between Scout and Jem and Atticus over how to treat Boo Radley is the template or pattern for all the rest of the conflicts and resolutions.
3–NewView Reverse. One Halloween night at the end of the story, Boo Radley SAVES their lives by protecting them from revengeful and murderous Bob Ewell. That’s a perfect NewView Reversal of what they were afraid he would do to them from the beginning of the story—instead of killing them, doing the reverse by SAVING them from death.
Support for NewView: On the last page of the book, Scout said, referring to Boo,
Atticus, he was real nice,
which was certainly a NewView compared to how the kids all had thought he was a killing monster through most of the book. The response Atticus gives makes it clear that he knows Scout is referring to Boo Radley, as he says,
Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.
Does this NewView Analysis seem too simple to you? It leaves out a lot of the story, doesn’t it?
However, all the prejudice and bigotry shown in the story–whites against blacks, blacks against whites, the educated against the illiterate, the illiterate against the educated, the young against the old, the old against the young–can be related to the simple OldView – NewView relationship I’ve shown here.
As a strong side note, allow me to point out that you can make a really strong argument for Atticus as a mockingbird, too, like Boo Radley and Tom Robinson, if you try.
Take a shot at it. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much support there is in the story for that particular NewView.
For an even more in-depth analysis of Harper Lee’s magnificent novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, see my upcoming new book, The Secret DNA of Analyzing Novels, which should be for sale here and on Amazon.com by next week.
