Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (29 page)

Scout's First Day of School
(part 1, chapters 2 and 3)

Scout's first day at school, as described in part 1, chapters 2 and 3, is full of confrontation, most notably between Scout and the new teacher, Miss Caroline Fisher. Even if Miss Fischer is just from upstate Alabama, she might as well have been from another country:

Miss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, “This says I am Miss Caroline Fisher. I am from North Alabama, from Winston County.” The class murmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share of the peculiarities indigenous to that region. (When Alabama seceded from the Union on January 11, 1861, Winston County seceded from Alabama, and every child in Maycomb County knew it.) North Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steel companies, Republicans, professors, and other persons of no background. (
TKAM
18)

What is interesting in Scout's description of the peculiarities of that region is that it begins with Liquor Interests and Big Mules, two elements of the Alabama political scene that Scout might be familiar with as the daughter of a representative, but that might not be common knowledge to “every child in Maycomb County.” Nonetheless, what is represented in the apprehension of the whole student body in their first encounter with Miss Caroline is the distaste of the farmer for industry and of the countryside for the city. Winston County may have been on the side of victory and may indeed represent the future, but that doesn't stop Maycomb from resenting the area and all it stands for. Thus, its residents are “othered” and considered suspicious and untrustworthy. Yet while Winston County may be just a stand-in for the hated North, it is also a force in state politics and a rival one at that. In fact, Scout's inadvertent slipping in of terms from the
Maycomb Tribune
's editorial page betrays a political rivalry between the industrial bourgeoisie of the big cities and the agricultural “aristocracy” of the rural communities.

At the same time, Miss Caroline Fisher represents the future, the change that is coming. As Jem describes it,

Our teacher says Miss Caroline's introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college. It'll be in all the grades soon. You don't have to learn much out of books that way—it's like if you wanta learn about cows, you go milk one, see? . . .

I'm just trying to tell you the new way they're teaching the first grade stubborn. It's the Dewey Decimal System.”
(TKAM
20)

For all of his misunderstanding and mixing up John and Melvil Dewey, Jem's grasp of the change occurring in their school is accurate, much to the Scout's chagrin: “As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something” (
TKAM
37). In her rejection of the new way of teaching, Scout seems to be rejecting modernity itself and expressing a wish to return to a time before public schooling reached the depths of Maycomb County. As she explains it to her father, “You never went to school and you do all right, so I'll just stay home too. You can teach me like Grandaddy taught you 'n' Uncle Jack” (
TKAM
32).

Yet the main reason for Scout's rejection of Miss Caroline Fisher and her version of John Dewey's ideas lies primarily in their confrontation over literacy on Scout's first day in a public school classroom. Hoping to teach the children something about writing and written language, Miss Caroline prints the alphabet on the blackboard. As most of the class is repeating the first grade, she's not showing them anything new, though she is unaware of this fact. When Miss Carline then chooses Scout to read aloud what it says on the blackboard, the trouble starts:

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of
My First Reader
and the stock-market quotations from
The Mobile Register
aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading. (
TKAM
19)

Rather than accepting Scout's precocious ability as a given, Miss Caroline sees her as an abnormal freak and as a threat to her dream of lifting her schoolchildren out of ignorance. After all, by already being able to read, Scout is not only separate from the other children in her class, but she is also closed to the influence of the new teaching method, which requires children to have an open mind. In the same way that Miss Caroline is symbolic of Scout's inevitable disappointment with formal learning, Scout becomes symbolic of Miss Caroline's disgust with the haphazard educational system in Maycomb that produces both the ignorant children she sees before her and this highly literate Scout.

Reading, which had seemed an innate ability to Scout, suddenly turns out to be something learned, an acquired ability. According to Miss Caroline and the Maycomb County school system, Scout has acquired this ability not only illegally but also somehow “wrongly.” As noted previously, Scout discovers that reading with Atticus apparently “would interfere with my reading” (
TKAM
19). Thus, the introduction of a “foreigner” into Scout's world-perspective produces a new way of seeing the world as a whole. Unfortunately, it is a way in which what was natural and unfettered becomes bound by rules and restrictions. Thus, Scout's remedy for the long hours of church—the innocent reading of hymns—becomes an illegal activity. Similarly, Calpurnia's strict writing instruction—“In Calpurnia's teaching, there was no sentimentality: I seldom pleased her and she seldom rewarded me” (
TKAM
21)—becomes the overindulgence of a peculiar child's unnatural interests.

However, Scout is not quite ready to give up her enjoyment of the written word. Instead, she appeals to Atticus, “And she said you taught me all wrong, so we can't ever read anymore, ever. Please don't send me back, please sir” (
TKAM
33). Atticus's responses to this plea is to teach Scout how to compromise with the authority's rules, rather than either obeying or directly disobeying, and thus they strike a deal: “If you'll concede the necessity of going to school, we'll go on reading every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?” (
TKAM
35). The line Atticus takes, where the rules about going to school do not entail following all of its prescriptions in one's private life, teaches Scout that there's no need to bend one's convictions, even in the light of overwhelming authority.

Scout learns that Maycomb's ways are not natural, but merely a set of conventions, as arbitrary as those of Winston County. Suddenly, convictions are one's own and are beyond any stricture, yet any claims of Truth, Intelligence, and Naturalness can rest on no more than local customs or family traditions. In other words, if Miss Caroline with all her education is not necessarily right, neither is Atticus with all his experience. The main difference between the two, the narrative implies, is that Atticus is aware of this.

Scout's ability to read is not limited to her literacy, as she is also, in this description of her first day, able to accurately “read” her classmates, as shown in the example of Walter Cunningham. When Miss Caroline tries to lend Walter a quarter to buy lunch downtown and he refuses, it is clear to everyone but Miss Caroline why he does so. Scout, after some prodding by her classmates, decides to provide her teacher with an explanation:

I rose graciously on Walter's behalf: “Ah—Miss Caroline?”

“What is it, Jean Louise?”

“Miss Caroline, he's a Cunningham.”

I sat back down.

“What, Jean Louise?”

I thought I had made things sufficiently clear. It was clear enough to the rest of us: Walter Cunningham was sitting there lying his head off. He didn't forget his lunch, he didn't have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow or the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life. (
TKAM
22)

While accepting the responsibility of explaining Walter's predicament, Scout is also taking on a role as spokesperson for the district. Yet even while Scout is able to quickly read Walter's predicament, the new element of Miss Caroline has Scout stumped. The phrase “he's a Cunningham” means nothing to Miss Caroline, and Scout does not quite understand why it doesn't explain everything, as it does for her and “the rest of us.” Although she tries again to explain, she realizes that she is not up to the task—“it was beyond my ability to explain things as well as Atticus” (
TKAM
24)—and Miss Caroline duly punishes her. That punishment may seem unjust since Scout was merely trying to help, but it does bring home the message that reading, whether of texts or of people, is not without danger, and if one gets it wrong, there is a price to pay.

Scout's first day of school also brings the introduction of the Ewells, another tribe from the outskirts of Maycomb, like the Cunninghams, but without the scruples. Burris Ewell, the specimen in Scout's class, may be only be in first grade, yet the danger he poses is clear:

Miss Caroline said, “Sit back down, please, Burris,” and the moment she said it I knew she had made a serious mistake. The boy's condescension flashed to anger.

“You try and make me, missus.”

Little Chuck Little got to his feet. “Let him go, ma'am,” he said. “He's a mean one, a hard-down mean one. He's liable to start somethin', and there's some little folks here.”

He was amongst the most diminutive of men, but when Burris Ewell turned toward him, Little Chuck's right hand went to his pocket. “Watch your step, Burris,” he said. “I'd soon's kill you as look at you. Now go home.”

Burris seemed to be afraid of a child half his height, and Miss Caroline took advantage of his indecision: “Burris, go home. If you don't I'll call the principal.” . . . Safely out of range, [Burris] turned and shouted: “Report and be damned to ye! Ain't no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c'n make me do notin'!” (
TKAM
30–31)

The Ewells are the classic villains of
To Kill a Mockingbird
, with Mayella Ewell as Tom Robinson's accuser and her father, Bob Ewell, as the attacker of Jem and Scout in the final episode. Burris here lives up to the type, menacing and hateful, but easily scared and cowed by any genuine resistance, even from the “most diminutive of men.” Burris Ewell—and by extension all of the Ewells, who “had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations” (
TKAM
33)—is shown to be repulsive physically as well as morally. Yet Burris is also a pitiful figure, who lacks a mother and whose “paw's right contentious” (
TKAM
30). There is no one to take care of Burris or to show him any kindness. Indeed, there is no one even to wash him, and Scout relates that he is “the filthiest human I had ever seen” (
TKAM
29). While Miss Caroline is eager to see Burris wash himself—and especially his hair, which is crawling with lice—she also lets her repulsion and her fear inform her view of the boy. Thus, when Chuck Little threatens to kill Burris, there's surprisingly not a word of protest from their mutual teacher, cowering behind her desk. Thus, this little episode shows the ugly side of Maycomb, not just in the Ewells, but also in the complete rejection of them by the rest of the town. It is as if no one would mind if one or all of the Ewells got killed or hurt, as long as it was done by another white person.

Only Atticus seems aware of the tragedy as well as the horror of the Ewells: “They were people, but they lived like animals” (
TKAM
33). Unfortunately, his attitude is similar to the rest of the “common folk” who “allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells' activities” (
TKAM
34). Yet, unlike most of the town, Atticus does not become blind to their common humanity, as witnessed both in his explanation to Scout and in his cross-examination of Mayella Ewell during Tom Robinson's trial.

The Dolphus Raymond Episode
(part 2, chapters 16 and 20)

Mr. Dolphus Raymond is first introduced in chapter 16, as part of the crowd that comes to town to watch the spectacle of Tom Robinson's trial and, indeed, to observe Atticus's defense of him. Among the Mennonites, Mr. X Billups—“X's his name, not his initial” (
TKAM
180)—Mr. Tensaw Jones, Miss Emily Davis, Mr. Byron Waller, Mr. Jake Slade, and the foot-washing Baptists that confront Miss Maudie over her flowers, Mr. Raymond hardly stands out. It is only his drinking that gets noticed: “Mr. Dolphus Raymond lurched by on his thoroughbred. ‘Don't see how he stays in the saddle,' murmured Jem. ‘How c'n you stand to get drunk 'fore eight in the morning?'” (
TKAM
180). Yet, even here, long before the whole story of Mr. Raymond gets presented, there is the curious mismatch between the drunken lurching and riding a thoroughbred, seeming to indicate degeneration in a wealthy family.

At the “gala occasion” (
TKAM
182) of the trial, Mr. Dolphus Raymond is seen again, sitting with the Negroes in the far corner of the square, drinking through two yellow straws out of a paper bag. That in itself is enough to raise Dill's curiosity: “‘Ain't ever seen anybody do that,' murmured Dill. ‘How does he keep what's in it in it?' (
TKAM
182). When Jem explains there is a Coca-Cola bottle inside, full of whiskey, Dill moves on to the next question: “Why's he sittin' with the colored folks?” (
TKAM
183). Again, Jem explains, first by saying that Mr. Raymond likes “'em better'n he likes us” (
TKAM
183), before giving a full history of his life. Thus Dill's curiosity leads to a fuller picture of Mr. Dolphus Raymond. Yet since all the explanation comes from Jem, without the usual commentary from either Atticus or Miss Maudie to take down the drama a peg or two, the emphasis is on how Raymond's erstwhile bride killed herself, rather than any choices Mr. Raymond made since that moment.