How To Love Lit Podcast

Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird - Episode 4 - The World Clarified And The Conclusion

Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird - Episode 3 - Real Life History Finds Its Way Into Tom Robinson's Trial

Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird - Episode 2 - Innocence, Motifs And The Power Of Language! Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.  I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  This is our second episode over that great American classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.  Last week, we introduced our author and both of her published books.  We compared them briefly, looked at the titles of each, and then focused more specifically on the origins and inspirations of Mockingbird.  We looked at Lee’s historical moment and argued that Lee’s novel, although set in the 1930s was far more interested in the world of the 1950s than the 1930s- a world struggling with civil rights.   We will develop the theme of racial injustice in the second part of the book, of course, but today as we lay the ground work for that part, we will continue our focus on part 1.  Last episode we ended our discussion talking about Maycomb, the tired old town where Lee set her story, a town which could be seen more like a character than an actual place.   Maycomb is a broken place and this brokenness is on display in several ways.  Part one only hints at the racial division that is the focus of the second section but that doesn’t mean it isn’t setting us up for it.  Lee carefully introduces several major themes and motifs then she proceeds to developed throughout and beyond the trial.  These themes should be considered as we read the section part of the book, for one reason because they provide a framework from which we should understand the insanity of the trial and its aftermath.  If you can’t understand Maycomb, you would not believe such a facade of a trial could even be possible.  So, Christy, can we say the primary role of section one is foreshadowing, then?  No.  I would absolutely say not the primary role.  There is forshadowing, for sure, and it surfaces in many different ways, but it’s the the primary role.  Harper Lee is laying the framework for a larger discussion than race.  Race is the context, but she is framing the racial discussion that will come.  Maycomb is the microcosm of society at large- any society, not just the segregated South of her days.  The disease of racism, and she does call it a disease, has several causes, and it’s the cause of this disease that she’s exploring.  The first half is charming and disarming.  It’s less intense and emotionally jarring than the second.  The language gets more offensive the closer we get to part two, but she’s setting us up for how she wants us to understand the racism we will soon be exposed to, and what she thinks we can and should do to address it.   Her argument is nuanced and much of it is delivered through the words of Atticus and Calpurnia, although Uncle Jack and Miss Maudie weigh in as well.  It’s illustrated through the actions of the children as they interact with the different groups in their community: the Cunninghams, the Radleys, The Ewell’s and Mrs. Dubose.  Lee explicitly discusses man’s relationship with power, its use and abuse of it,  She blatantly spells out for us what a mockingbird symbolically represents and the principle protecting the innocent.  Atticus not only tells his children to learn to understanding the lived experience of those around them, but forces this lesson upon them in what comes across as a very cruel way to learn a life lesson.  The setting of part 1 is the playful existence of childhood innocence, but as we walk with Scout, we are to learn these same life-lessons before she forces us to apply them in this adult world of experience which is cruel and ruthless in many ways.   

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.  And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Today we begin our discussion on a deeply beloved book by many but at the same time one of the most censored books ever written on the American continent.  When it was published in 1960 it was an immediate hit with the public.  Critics called it melodramatic and over-simplistic but that hasn’t stopped people from reading it and loving it.  Harper Collins boasts almost 50 million copies sold, by latest count,  in over 40 languages.  It won the coveted Pulitzer Prize.  In 1962, it was adapted by Horton Foote into an Academy Award-winning film, admittedly diminishing the role of Scout and the story of the children but drawing considerable attention and acclaim for many reasons, one being the memorable and Oscar-winning performance of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.  The focus of the  movie is, of course, the trial of a wrongly convicted and clearly innocent African-American gentleman by the name of Tom Robinson.   The film is considered one of the greatest American films of all time and even Harper Lee liked it. After viewing she had this to say, “"I can only say that I am a happy author. They have made my story into a beautiful and moving motion picture.”   Of course, it’s the racial element of the book that has always kept this book at the center of controversy- from both sides of the political aisle. It has been held in contempt for its language which is extremely raw, and obviously, and for that reason alone, it’s been censored in many circles.  But that’s not the only problematic issue.  Many have drawn attention to the idealized characterization of Atticus Finch as a paragon of respectability and champion of for the oppressed.  Toni Morrison labeled him a “white savior”.  More recently, social advocates have challenged Lee’s characterization of the Ewells as feral animals depicting them basically as sub-human.  There is no doubt the setting is the segregated South of the 1930s; there is no doubt; Maycomb is a broken town; there is no doubt that the child Scout looks at her father in that way we hope all 9 year old daughters are afforded the opportunity to look at their fathers.  So, is this a dated sociological study or timeless classic?  Lee’s ability to stir so many emotions and raise so many questions is freakishly genius.   Through the eyes of a child, she questions our ability as humans to even understand of the role of time in our world, the place of human judgement, our ability to give and receive social acceptance, the causes of human cruelty and human kindness.  She goes a lot of directins- but what do all these things mean when presented as a whole?  How do they connect us to each other?  What did these things mean to the most provincial of people possible in 1935, what did they mean to a cosmopolitan American in 1960 and what do they mean to a world-wide interconnected globe today?  I know you like to talk about timeless themes and universal truths and so do I, don’t get me wrong, but historically speaking there’s a lot here I think is important to discuss as well.  This book is not just regarded as sensitive because of its language and racial issues; it’s also considered one of the most revealing portraits of the American South to come out of that generation- and beyond issues of race there is a lot more to see.  The book is important historically.  Lee was born an insider to a very specific and closed cultural group, but she pulled out of her culture and tried to examine it critically in some ways as an outsider, but an outsider who understood the inside.   

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