Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (19 page)

Lee's use of Boo and Bob as ironic counterparts becomes especially apparent when the novel is re-read, although the contrasts are obvious enough even during an initial perusal of the text. The novel is constructed in ways that highlight the significant parallels and differences between the lives and living conditions of the two characters. The run-down, dilapidated condition of the Radley home, for instance, foreshadows the later, even more decrepit appearance of the Ewell shack. Thus, Lee writes that the Radley Place

was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard—a “swept” yard that was never swept—where Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance. (
TKAM
9)

The Radley home thus symbolizes the decay and deterioration of the Radley family itself, including its isolation from the rest of the community. The Ewell home, however, is even more clearly a reflection of the family who lives within it:

Maycomb's Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin. The cabin's plank walls were supplemented with sheets of corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat, so only its general shape suggested its original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun hall, the cabin rested uneasily upon four irregular lumps of limestone. Its windows were merely open spaces in the walls, which in the summertime were covered with greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep out the varmints that feasted on Maycomb's refuse. (
TKAM
193–194)

The fact that Bob Ewell raises his family in what “was once a Negro cabin” seems not only significant but intensely ironic: it helps explain his need, later in the novel, to assert his superiority over blacks and to identify himself with the novel's other white characters, even though many of the white citizens of Maycomb regard him as the epitome of white trash (a fact symbolized by the location of his shack). The Ewells, despite being white, are a far less healthy and productive family than most of the black families depicted in the book, including the family of Tom Robinson. Although Ewell cannot stand to think of himself as being inferior to the novel's blacks, it is clear that his accusations against Tom Robinson are rooted, in part, in his realization that he is, in fact, a figure of contempt and disdain among the novel's other whites. The only way in which Ewell enjoys any social distinction is because of his skin color; otherwise he is as isolated—and as much a figure of derisive ridicule—as Boo Radley himself.

However, whereas Boo Radley would once have been welcome in middle-class Maycomb society if he had not been isolated by his father, Bob Ewell has deliberately chosen to isolate himself and his family from any kind of healthy contact with, or respect from, the rest of the community. Here as elsewhere in the novel, then, Boo is merely a victim, whereas Bob is a victimizer. Boo and Bob both live in run-down, ramshackle houses, but Boo bears no responsibility for his unattractive living conditions, whereas Bob Ewell bears full responsibility for his. No other houses in the novel are described in such unappealing terms as the homes of Boo Radley and Bob Ewell, but in this case as in so many other instances, the similarities between Boo and Bob also help highlight the significant differences between them.

The novel's first references to Boo actually help foreshadow the later appearance and activities of Bob Ewell. Thus, early in the novel, Scout reports that inside the Radley house “lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows” (
TKAM
9). Scout then notes the widespread belief among the town's citizens that any “stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his [Boo's] work,” and she reports that once “the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events” that were quickly (if falsely) attributed to Boo (
TKAM
9).

All of this frightening and fantastic phrasing, of course, foreshadows the later—and quite real—malevolence of Bob Ewell in the aftermath of the trial. Thus, Ewell pays a strange nocturnal visit to the home of Judge Taylor, who had presided at the trial. Taylor, who is home alone, hears a peculiar “scratching noise . . . coming from the rear of the house,” and when he goes to investigate he finds “the screen door swinging open” and catches a glimpse of Ewell's “shadow on the corner of the house.” His wife comes home to find Taylor sitting “with a shotgun across his lap” (
TKAM
285). Later, in an even more disturbing incident, Ewell follows Tom Robinson's wife, Helen, as she walks to work: “All the way
. . . , Helen said, she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul words” (
TKAM
286). Then, of course, on a night when there is “no moon” (
TKAM
292), Ewell actually stalks (and then assaults) Jem and Scout.

If anyone in Maycomb, then, is truly a “malevolent phantom” who goes out when “the moon [is] down” and provokes terror through “a series of morbid nocturnal events,” it is Bob Ewell, not Boo Radley. By focusing on an imaginary phantom in the beginning of the novel and then shifting her attention to a genuinely malign figure as the book closes, Lee not only ties the two halves of the book together but makes an important point about the nature of evil. Real evil is not the sort of thing that exists in gothic fiction or in the imaginations of children; it is the sort of thing practiced by men like Bob Ewell who are so obsessed with themselves that they are willing to abuse not only other people in general but even children, and not only their own children but the helpless children of others.

As has already been suggested, Boo is described early in the novel in ways that make his alleged evil seem humorous and implausible:

Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate any animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time. (
TKAM
14)

Even at the time this description is first offered, it seems anything but “reasonable”; rather, it is a reflection of Jem's overheated youthful imagination, and it is probably also a reflection of his exposure to gothic novels, horror films, folk wisdom, and the irrational prejudices of the local community.
4
Jem assumes that Boo is even willing to murder children (“he'll kill us each and every one, Dill Harris” [
TKAM
15]) and that he is capable of assaulting children with a knife (
TKAM
15)—assumptions that prove false concerning Boo but that prove all too ironically appropriate concerning the later conduct of Bob Ewell. Significantly, the only killing that Boo ever commits is a killing in defense of children—specifically protecting them from Ewell's revenge for their father's treatment of him at the Tom Robinson trial. Lee implicitly compares and contrasts Boo Radley and Bob Ewell throughout the text until she finally brings them together in a bloody nighttime confrontation in which Boo is revealed not as the villain of a gothic children's book but as the hero of a far more complicated kind of novel.

Bob Ewell's capacity for evil is foreshadowed long before he actually enters the novel as a major character. His young son Burris, for instance, is described in chapter 3 as a lice-infested truant who comes to school only on the first day of each new academic year and then rejects schooling the rest of the time. When the new young teacher decides to send him home to prevent the other children from becoming infected with his “cooties,” Burris responds with a kind of vulgar anger that foreshadows the later conduct of his father, whose worst traits Burris is obviously in the process of adopting as his own: “‘Ain't no snot-nosed slut of a school teacher ever born c'n make me do nothin'! You ain't makin' me go nowhere, missus. You just remember that, you ain't makin' me go nowhere!” (
TKAM
31). Although he is still apparently under the age of ten, Burris is already emulating some of his father's own antisocial attitudes and conduct. Burris' words and behavior this early in the novel adumbrate his father's later negative conduct during the trial and afterwards.

Thus, when Bob Ewell is called to testify at the trial of Tom Robinson, his opening words are already so vulgar and suggestive (at least by the standards of the time) that the judge must immediately warn him against making “obscene speculations” (
TKAM
196). Whereas Boo Radley, despite his fearsome reputation, is actually a highly reserved and soft-spoken Southern gentleman, Bob Ewell is crude both in his speech and in his public conduct. He also, unlike Boo, enjoys being the center of public attention. He is described as “a little bantam cock of a man” who “rose and strutted to the stand,” and when he turns to face the courtroom “his face” looks “as red as his neck” (
TKAM
193). In height, cockiness, and complexion (he is quite literally a redneck), Bob Ewell thus contrasts pointedly with Boo Radley, who is later described as very tall, very shy, and very pale (
TKAM
310; 318–319). In addition, Ewell shows little respect even to the district attorney who is acting on his behalf (
TKAM
195), just as he also later shows no respect to the memory of his dead wife (
TKAM
195). His language is consistently and persistently vulgar, as when he describes his daughter “screamin' like a stuck hog” or when alleges having seen “that black nigger yonder ruttin' on my Mayella” (
TKAM
196). Nevertheless, despite his supposed devotion to his daughter, it soon becomes clear that he has no great love or concern for any of his children (
TKAM
207–208) and that his treatment of Mayella in particular has been both physically and perhaps even sexually abusive (
TKAM
207–208; 221).

Boo Radley, of course, is just the opposite of Bob Ewell in all these ways. Long before Boo ever speaks, his fundamental values become clear, especially his fundamental affection toward innocent children. He leaves gifts for the children in the knothole of a tree (
TKAM
37); he inconspicuously sews and returns the pants Jem tore while trespassing on the Radley property (
TKAM
66), thus preventing Jem from getting into trouble; and then later, while Scout is shivering in the winter cold while watching Miss Maudie's house burn to the ground, it is Boo Radley who quietly comes up behind her and puts a blanket around her shoulders (
TKAM
81–82). By this point in the novel, it is clear even to the suspicious, superstitious children that Boo is a fundamentally benign figure, especially in his treatment of youngsters. He is, in some ways, as admirable a father figure as Atticus Finch himself, and indeed Lee makes this comparison between Boo and Atticus (and this contrast between Boo and Ewell) explicit near the very end of the novel in a strange, almost surrealistic passage in which Scout reminisces about the events of the year just past, recalling specific moments of significant connection between the Finch children and their loving father.

Just when we have become accustomed to her allusions to Atticus, Scout surprises us by alluding instead to Boo Radley: “Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him” (
TKAM
321). By this point in the book, it is clear that Scout has not only become able to empathize with Boo Radley—to “stand in his shoes and walk around in them” (
TKAM
321)—but has even become able to think of Boo as a kind of father figure, as indeed he has shown himself repeatedly toward the Finch children throughout the book. Boo, who never enjoyed an especially close or affectionate relationship with his own father, acts repeatedly as a kind of paternal figure to Scout and Jem. In this respect, as in so many others, he differs strikingly from Bob Ewell, who lacks any capacity for tenderness or affection, even toward his own genetic children. Ewell, indeed, is incapable of standing in another person's shoes. He is so obsessed with his own pride that although he has fathered numerous children in the biological sense, he is hardly a father at all in the deepest and truest senses of that word.

By implicitly and explicitly contrasting Boo and Bob throughout the novel, then, Lee not only emphasizes many of her book's key themes but also enhances the sophistication of the book's artistic design, making its structure far more subtle and solid than may seem obvious at first. The children's fear of Boo dominates the first part of the novel, but as the novel proceeds, Boo seems a far less frightening figure than he had originally appeared. In the case of Bob Ewell, the process is just the reverse: he is a major figure in the second half of the novel, and the more the novel develops, the more genuinely menacing and even evil he appears. Lee (I would argue) uses the contrasts between Boo Radley and Bob Ewell to help enhance the book's coherence and unity.
To Kill a Mockingbird
is indeed “a child's book” (to use Flannery O'Connor's reiterated description), but to say this is by no means to suggest that it is artistically immature or structurally simple. Though the narrative is seen through the eyes of a young person and reveals childlike naïveté and humor, it also demonstrates how perceptive and insightful a child's viewpoint can be, indeed sometimes achieving more skillful and penetrating observations than those attained by adults. Lee's use of Boo Radley and Bob Ewell as foils throughout the work adds to the skill and complexity of the novel's artistry and thus helps make this work appealing to a far broader audience than children alone.