Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (40 page)

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To Kill a Mockingbird
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Alec Gilmore

William Wordsworth, in one of his major poems reflecting on his growing up,
1
recalls how one summer evening he found a small boat under a willow tree and on impulse decided to go off rowing down Lake Windermere. As he rowed in the moonlight, surrounded by the mountains, it seemed as if the boat was gliding along almost under its own power and, anxious to prove his skill to row in a straight line, he fixed his gaze “upon the summit of a craggy ridge/The horizon's utmost boundary” (ll.371–72) with nothing above but the stars and the grey sky, “When, from behind that craggy steep till then The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and large, As if with voluntary power instinct Upreared its head” (ll.377–80).

Suddenly the mountains, the water and the skies, which had cradled and fascinated him from birth, created a deep anxiety. Stricken with fear, a mixture of awe, wonder, respect, and apprehension, Wordsworth turned about; yet the more he rowed, the more that “huge peak” seemed to pursue him “with measured motion” as he made his way back to the safety of the willow tree, abandoned the boat, and made for home. For days the author lived with an awareness “of unknown modes of being . . . a darkness . . . call it solitude or blank desertion” (373).

In that experience Wordsworth was the victim of an encounter with “the other,” an unknown force able to disturb his equilibrium that he could neither control nor ignore. Deep down, he knew that that other called for respect. A little deeper down perhaps, or maybe deeper in a different way, it frightened him.

In the context of religion, Rudolph Otto
2
has defined such disturbing encounters with “the numinous” as a nonrational (not to be confused with irrational)
mystery, which lies at the very heart of humanity. He called it
mysterium tremendum
to sharpen the strength of the emotion and the fear that goes with it. Similarly, critic C. S. Lewis comments (5) that it is unlike other fears and defines it not so much as the fear of a reality (like confrontation with a wild animal) but as the fear of the uncanny (like a ghost). But then to the
mysterium tremendum
Otto adds
et fascinans
, the overwhelming experience from which you cannot escape, like confrontation with a mighty spirit. The consequences are profound because you never know what such a spirit might do or how to respond to it, and hence you find yourself living with the need to keep your distance. Though unable to handle or control it, you cannot deny it or leave it alone either.

Against a backdrop of Otto's philosophical or theological musings, “otherness” emerges as an essential component of our common humanity, which from infancy calls for a natural caution, suspicion, fear, and anxiety when confronted by the other. It may be in our genes or something we imbibe with our mother's milk, but it is an important and necessary part of growing up until we learn to discover who is or is not to be trusted. In this process, the other morphs from anyone not in our family to anyone not in our street, town, country, tribe, race, or the like, or to anyone who does not share our faith, interests, likes, and dislikes.

Starting in a different place and using narrative as her method, Harper Lee, in her only published novel, explores the experience of otherness in a variety of guises. At one level,
To Kill a Mockingbird
is a human story of racial prejudice in a fairly limited, not to say small-minded, community relating to a particular place and time (“a tired old town” in the 1930s); at another it is a communal expression of Wordsworth's personal experience of fear and fascination. In order to dig into this latter experience the first step is to identify the other.

Identifying the Other

Identifying the other varies from person to person and from place to place and is by definition self-centered. To the white, the other is black; to the black, the other is white; and so on, in a multitude of less sharply defined, but no less significant, shades of grey, such as the educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, the clean and the dirty, the courteous and the rude, and so on. All are expressions of an “exclusive other,” which is one of the most popular and familiar expressions of otherness. It is a product of the “them and us” syndrome, a label we pin on people we don't like, are afraid of or suspicious of; unfortunately we are all party to it, sometimes as victims and sometimes as perpetrators.

For the most part, otherness can be kept in check by various balances and counterbalances and ironically can even form the foundation for a healthy, positive, and creative way of life. Without the checks and balances, however, such exclusivity too easily becomes set in stone with negative results for all parties. In an extreme form or in the hands of lobby groups or manipulators, it may even become little more than a deceptive creation or crude invention.
To Kill a Mockingbird
focuses on both kinds of exclusivity—the one in the main story (Tom Robinson) and the other in the meta-narrative (Boo Radley).

In the main story, where the predominant theme is race and color, the exclusive other cuts both ways—the white excluding the black and the black excluding the white. So when Calpurnia takes Scout and Jem to
her
church, for example, she and the children are rebuffed by Lula, a member of the congregation, who says to Calpurnia, “I wants to know why you bringin' white chillun to nigger church. . . . You ain't got no business bringin' white chillun here—they got their church, we got our'n. It is our church, ain't it, Miss Cal?” (
TKAM
135–136).

In the meta-narrative, which is almost a commentary on the main story, we see the damage caused by otherness extreme and unchecked. Not altogether unlike Wordsworth, three children (all under twelve and moved by a mix of fear and fascination) let loose their imaginations on something strange or unusual: perhaps not of great consequence but quite beyond their experience and understanding. Almost before they know what they are doing, and certainly before other people know what they are up to, they allow their imaginations to distort what is there, either for their amusement or to bolster their fear and uncertainties. These fears are complicated by the background provided by the environment and folklore they have grown up with. They find their scary perceptions escalate to the point where they find themselves creating something that is not really there at all. In their case, the consequences may turn out to be relatively unimportant. However, in the hands of a manipulator or lobby group the same experience may prove disastrous.

Both the narrative and the meta-narrative are then backed by a chorus of others. Each character tells us something about the way we treat not only the others we keep on the outside but also the others we allow inside our circle, though not without taking care to establish our distance from them with phrases such as, “Of course,
we
are not like
them”
or “Some people would do this, but
we
don't.” Together, the chorus demonstrates that there is no single brand of otherness. There is a touch of the exclusive other in us all, often a part of ourselves of which we may not even be aware but which we need to confront head on. Once understood and wisely handled, this exclusive other can help us establish the “togetherness of the others” that creates the harmony of community life, but to fully appreciate that, step two is necessary. We must struggle to appreciate the other in us all.

The Other in Us All

Jem sums up his own feelings toward the end when he says,

There's four kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind, like us and the neighbors. There's the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes. . . . The thing about it is, our kind of folks don't like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don't like the Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks. (
TKAM
258)

Scouts adds to this, “Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks” (
TKAM
259).

To Kill a Mockingbird
suggests the issues are not quite so simple. Otherness is not confined to education, social class, or lifestyle, and there are many other forms every bit as prevalent, powerful, and destructive as those of race, color or eccentric behavior. Every community has its own collection of others, some more obvious and troublesome than others.

Miss Caroline, the newly arrived teacher in Maycomb, might be described as the
inevitable other
. She is the product of what her previous life has made her and quite unaware of the hazards she faces as soon as she steps outside her own familiar environment. In her case, the focus is education but might just as readily be a host of other factors.

Given Miss Caroline's divergent background, the whole of Maycomb is other to Miss Caroline, a fact exemplified on the one hand by a bright Scout, whose father is “interfering with her reading” by teaching her at home (
TKAM
19), and on the other by a Walter Cunningham, who turns up without lunch and refuses to go and buy some even when Miss Caroline offers to lend him money. Most interesting is the fact that when Miss Caroline goes berserk at the sight of a cootie in Burris Ewell's hair, her class begins to see her as the other as well (
TKAM
28–30) and the extent of her otherness is confirmed as she struggles to cope with the fact that Burris has no intention of coming back the following day anyway.

Miss Maudie is a variation on the inevitable other, perhaps better described as the
characteristic other
. She would be other in almost any fairly small, traditional and close community. Otherness is her driving force. It makes her who she is and enables other people to identify her. She cherishes her otherness and takes a pride in it. She hates her house and spends most of her time in her garden, which she loves, along with “everything that grew in God's earth including the weeds” (
TKAM
47). When her house is burnt down and most of her possessions destroyed, Miss Maudie still takes a lively and almost totally detached view of possessions compared to the interest she still has in Jem and Scout's affairs (
TKAM
83).

At the same time, however, she is not averse to distinguishing herself in such a way as to make the other person the “other,” as if to use their otherness to define her own. She and Nathan Radley, for example, may both be Baptists, but she is quick to point out that they are different sorts of Baptists (
TKAM
49–50).
3
She is also “not Miss Stephanie”—a more traditional, churchy sort of person, a gossip and a busybody,
4
and one of the main sources for stories about Boo Radley—and is dismissive of what she considers Miss Stephanie's negative attitudes.
5
Miss Maudie may not actually reject the other, but she does assert that the other is not Miss Maudie.

In Dolphus Raymond and Mrs. Dubose, we have a couple of
self-created others
, similar in their isolation but very different from each other and in the reasons that determine their otherness. Dolphus Raymond helps us to understand why some people choose to be other to the point of deliberately creating an “other image” for themselves,
6
whereas in the case of Mrs. Dubose, otherness is a device to cover the root of her problems, which only comes out after her death.

During a break in the trial of Tom Robinson, Dill notices Dolphus sitting apart with the Negroes, looking somewhat out of place and behaving strangely.
7
Jem explains that Dolphus comes from a real old family and owns all one side of the river bank but also has a reputation for being a drunkard (which he isn't) and (some people say) has a colored woman and several mixed children. These details result in Dolphus being identified with the colored folks, and Jem adds, “He likes 'em better 'an he likes us, I reckon” (
TKAM
182–183). Later Dolphus explains to the children that the image people have of him is one he has deliberately created because “It helps folks if they can latch on to a reason. . . . It ain't honest but it's mighty helpful to folks [because] you see they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I want to live” (
TKAM
227–229).

Mrs. Dubose similarly seems to choose awkwardness and hostility to present herself as “a lady with a difference.” Neighborhood opinion is unanimous that she is “the meanest old woman who ever lived” (
TKAM
39), and in the eyes of the children, she is no more than one step away from Boo Radley. However, whereas Boo Radley worries Scout and Jem by his absence, Mrs. Dubose irritates them by her presence. Fearsome, objectionable, and sitting in a wheelchair on her front porch, she consistently launches verbal abuse at Scout and Jem whenever they go by. Jem will not go near without Atticus (
TKAM
39), and when Atticus requires him to read to her for two hours every afternoon for a month, as a penance for chopping the tops off every camellia bush in her front yard, Jem finds it a very harsh punishment indeed (
TKAM
122).

Her negative feelings, however, are revealed as not entirely reciprocal because one of the last things Mrs. Dubose does before she dies is to place “a white, waxy, perfect camellia” in a candy box and send it to Jem. Jem is angry and confused by this act, not understanding the meaning of the gesture, but Atticus explains to him that it is the old lady's way of telling him that everything is all right.
Her self-created image of awkwardness and hostility was her way of concealing the fact that she was a morphine addict. Atticus then explains that he wanted Jem to read to her to discover what real courage is. “She was a great lady,” says Atticus. “She was the bravest person I ever knew” (
TKAM
127–128).