“Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
Touching. A true journey through the most beautiful forms of humanity. To Kill a Mockingbird is by no means a novel that one would despise. It is a novel written by a person who knows the human being at its best and worst. A person whose eyes have caught cruelty, love, care, humbleness, forgiveness, wisdom, racism, injustice, brotherhood, sisterhood, parenthood. Harper Lee. Born and raised in Alabama, in a town called Monroeville. Pulitzer prize winner. Not bad for a person who worked in the reservation department of an international airline company before becoming a writer! As read in the Mandarin pocket book, “her chief interests, apart from writing are nineteenth-century literature and eighteenth century music, watching politicians and cats, travelling and being alone.” How could one not love her? I have always believed that solitude is an essential part of people, and if a person cannot be by himself or herself, there is something not right in him or her. Silence and time is so precious in the creative process. Be it as a job or as living your life. I remember my music teacher at school, Mrs. Waterman, whose definition of music has always accompanied me. “Music is the art of well combining sounds and silences with time.” Philosophical indeed, yet, very practical and true.
To Kill a Mockingbird (first published in 1960) had been on my reading list for a long time before finally getting the book from my friend Matilde’s bookshelf. It was there, calling me when I caught sight of it. Love at first paragraph it was. I love books written from the first person’s perspective. Feels as if one is side by side with the storyteller. Scout (Jean Louise is her name), apart from being my favorite tomboy on earth, is the representation of every little girl who knows the value of gender equality in a man’s world. Nine years old and a very unique way of looking at everything that means life. Her relationship with her brother, Jem (Jeremy), is the most beautiful and respectful one. It is the way a sister and a brother should really be. Atticus, her father and my favorite character, is a man of justice, a man of honor and a tender human being. What extraordinary characters Harper Lee created! Not really “created”, as these characters were people she knew, neighbors, friends (Dill was inspired by Lee’s friend, Truman Capote). However, the sensibility of bringing them to life is just astonishing. The Finch family… plus Calpurnia, their black and loving cook. Through Atticus’ work as a lawyer, we get to know about racism and evil in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s. “Maycomb is an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.” Scout and Jem, and their friend Dill are touched by the cruel surrounding of poverty and square-minded people who believe blacks were not humans, but also by the simplicity and courage of the town people. Sounds very contemporary. Same people. Same world. Same problems.
“What I meant was, if Atticus Finch dank until he was drunk he wouldn’t be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one , and you can look down the street and see the results”.
“Right. But do you think I could face my children otherwise? You know what’s going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get Jem and Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all, without catching Maycomb’s usual disease. Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand…I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. I hope they trust me enough.”
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions”, said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
“You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?”
“I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody…I’m hard put, sometimes – baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
“In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one’s mind incapable of definite purpose.”
“Tom was a black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet. The whites of his eyes shone in his face, and when he spoke we saw flashes of his teeth. If he had been whole, he would have been a fine specimen of a man.”
“I think there’s only one kind of folks. Folks.”
It is difficult to say why a book is so important in one’s life. Everybody has a reason and it all depends on the moment, what you have been going through, the mood, experiences you have had, your age, even where you are at that very moment! But if I could mention books that are already part of my life, I definitely would mention To Kill a Mockingbird as one of my favorites, together with A Catcher in the Rye, The Magic Mountain, A Hundred Years of Solitude, Hopscotch, Anna Karenina, all-of-VirginiaWoolf, and on, and on. Books you know you will be reading in some years and you will never tire of reading.
Letters from Indra 