Two days before Parkland, a trending post on my Facebook feed featured an article about how schools in Minnesota and Mississippi were eliminating Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird from their curriculums because “there is some [racist] language in the book that makes people uncomfortable.”
As an eighth grade English teacher, this distressed me; my richest discussions with my students about social justice and empathy have emerged from reading this novel together. Plus, all the hot topics are addressed: addiction, racial inequality, gun control. To Kill a Mockingbird has been resonant and relevant since it was published in 1960.
Then Parkland happened and I realized how pivotal this book is at this particular American moment. In her masterpiece, Lee reveals what courage really is and, poignantly, what it isn’t.
For those who might have forgotten the finer details, To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer who chooses to defend a black man in a trial in 1930s Alabama. To his two children, Jem and Scout, he is a feeble old man: he doesn’t play football or wrestle, and he is always putting the kibosh on the fun they have tormenting their outcast neighbor Boo Radley. (Is it coming back to you yet?)
One day, a rabid dog comes limping onto the Finch property. The town’s sheriff, (“ the good guy with the gun”) afraid he would miss his target, summons Atticus, who is known as “the best shot in town”-- unbeknownst to his own children. Atticus shoots the dog dead in one shot. When this hidden talent is revealed, Jem and Scout are delighted. Their dad has the coolest trait of all: he can shoot! Atticus is redeemed in his children’s eyes.
Shortly after this incident, Atticus dispatches Scout and Jem to the old and sickly Mrs. Dubose’s house, where they have been ordered to read to the cantankerous woman each afternoon for a month. They sit and watch her, repulsed, as her head lolls, her eyes roll back, and her frail body writhes in pain. They are relieved when their month-long stint is up, but soon after, Atticus reports that Mrs. Dubose has died.
He explains that she had been sick for a long time, prescribed morphine for her pain. When the doctor told her she only had a few months left to live, she decided to quit morphine. This was an excruciatingly painful process, as evidenced by Jem and Scout, but Mrs. Dubose succeeded in dying on her own terms, free from the bonds of addiction. Atticus calls her the bravest woman he ever knew, and explains to his children why he sent them over to read with her:
"I wanted to show you what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
Atticus knows that his children, with their simple thinking, equate heroic courage with guns. He sends them to Mrs. Dubose to show them that real courage is not about guns, but about fighting for what you believe in, even if it’s difficult and painful; even if you know you will lose.
Atticus further underscores his point by discouraging his children from shooting guns at any live creature. But, he says, “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird….mockingbirds don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” In other words, it is downright wrong to use a gun to kill something purely innocent, like mockingbirds.
Or children.
Lee couldn’t be clearer: courage is personified by the Parkland students and those following their lead. Courage isn’t men, women, or teachers with guns. Courage is students who take a stand for what they believe is right, despite the greatest of odds and the deepest of pockets. These teens are brazen and fearless, going head-to-head with the NRA, challenging old norms and outdated ideas with new, hard-won understandings about human rights.
They are inspiring a movement among their peers. Students are marching to their state capitals, planning walk-outs, and writing open letters on social media forums. They are risking punishment at school, possibly jeopardizing their admittance to colleges (though it is notable that many colleges are sending out statements that this activism will not impact their admission). They are learning that change will not come easy, if at all, but they are all in anyway.
"It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
Sometimes you do.
To Kill a Mockingbird is more important now than ever. Literature, with its universal ideas and timeless messages, can bring us together, as we drift apart in so many other ways. This novel teaches us what true courage is, how taking a stand can make a difference, how empathy can ease tensions within a community. LITERATURE MAKES US BETTER HUMAN BEINGS.
But only if we read it.
It is the wrong time to remove this book from a school’s curriculum. This book belongs front and center in the classroom, not relegated to some dusty shelves for kids to find for themselves. Teachers must share this book and facilitate the difficult conversations it elicits, even about racial slurs and social justice. These discussions are what will allow real progress to happen.
Classrooms have become battlefields, both literally and metaphorically. We must all summon our courage--the kind that Harper Lee extolled--and make sure our classrooms are places where ideas are the only things flying across the room.
