I mean to write at least two Articles about professional civility. Until a few months ago there was no better example of civility than Atticus Finch of Maycomb, Alabama as we knew him from To Kill a Mockingbird. Then came the recently released Go Set a Watchman and its cruel “exposure” of Atticus as a bigot unworthy of the reverence he previously inspired. Before I gently criticize Atticus, I must defend him. By “him” my meaning is the Atticus Finch of 1935 and not the Atticus of the 1950’s.
My preparation for this defense has been sincere but uneven. I read (again) the entirety of To Kill a Mockingbird. That reading confirmed my opposition to turning a single page of Go Set a Watchman, though I read about it including a chapter-by-chapter summary. The scarce time I have for reading fiction doesn’t accommodate the full reading of books that should never have been published.
A part of my analysis arises from the chronology of the two Harper Lee novels. There is To Kill a Mockingbird depicting Atticus in the 1930’s “followed” by the 1950’s update of Go Set a Watchman. The chronological twist is that the 1950’s version of Atticus was written first, in the 1950’s. An explanation is that Harper Lee found no willing publisher when she shopped Go Set a Watchman as her first novel. Rather than abandon her inspiration, Harper followed a suggestion that she write about the Finch family earlier in the life of Atticus. The product of that effort was To Kill a Mockingbird.
In Mockingbird Atticus was a great father, lawyer, and humanitarian with an unparalleled sense of duty. In professional matters he was civility personified. Moreover, he was the same man at home and on the street as he was in court. In Watchman Atticus was a bigot embittered by Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
What happened to poor Atticus? In Mockingbird his character was complete. Despite the churning plot, the challenges, and more than one tragic turn, the character of 1930’s Atticus did not evolve. Allow me to share the observation that Mockingbird featured: plot; a wonderful depiction of place and time; the persistent reinforcement of sights, sounds, and scents; and genuinely drawn characters who (for the most part) conducted themselves in accord with their described traits. The literary device of character development was reserved (and applied sparingly) to the children as required by their slow maturation. This is not to say that the children’s characters were allowed to develop freely. Rather, they were fated to acquire the well-defined traits assigned to their respective families, as though character were consigned to a rigid caste system.
So (again) I ask what happened to poor Atticus between Mockingbird and Watchman? 1930’s Atticus became (or already was) the victim of Harper Lee’s lapses in continuity, compounded by the reverse chronology of the writing of the two novels. Consider for example that the Watchman Atticus had won the Tom Robinson trial against all odds. Consider that Jean Louise’s lifelong friend (who lived across the street) from Watchman, Hank Clinton, was not mentioned in Mockingbird. A lesser continuity break between the two works is that the back-woods “Old Sarum” children had their own public school (until it burned) in Watchman while in Mockingbird they shared Scout’s elementary school from her eventful first day of the first grade.
Mockingbird and Watchman have to be partially autobiographical. Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama. Her father was a lawyer turned-newspaperman afflicted by the prejudices of his time and place. In Watchman, it seems that Harper Lee wrote about the father she had. In Mockingbird, it seems that Harper Lee wrote about the father she would have preferred.
Young Scout was troubled (in Mockingbird) by the taunts from classmates, neighbors, and even relatives that Atticus was a race traitor for accepting an appointment to represent black Tom Robinson against (false) charges of raping a young white woman. Scout asked Atticus whether he was (in the language of the taunts) “a n*****-lover.” He replied, “I certainly am.” Later Atticus put his own life at risk to stare down a lynch mob gathered outside the Maycomb jail on the eve of Tom Robinson’s trial. When he learned that the (convicted) Tom Robinson had been fatally shot while trying to escape from a prison yard, he immediately left with his cook Calpurnia (who knew the Robinson family) to inform the widow. Atticus lectured his children that a white man who cheats a black man is “trash.” He spoke to Scout of the “Ku Klux” in the past tense, cheerfully relating a story (about 15 years old) of how a jewish merchant of Maycomb rebuked Klansmen parading in front of his house in sheets from his store. And although Atticus held jews in high esteem, he couldn’t bring himself to despise Adolf Hitler for mistreating jews in 1935 Germany. All of these character traits of Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch were set in stone, immutable.
Mockingbird was published in 1960, a great success. The Hollywood movie followed, another great success. So why not release Watchman? The answer is that Watchman’s portrayal of Atticus Finch had at its core an unreconcilable contradiction of Atticus as drawn in Mockingbird. The manuscript of Watchman was wisely set aside for decades and then unwisely released. My point (at last) is that the Atticus of Mockingbird and the Atticus of Watchman are different men entirely. It is still safe and proper to revere and to quote Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch.
Nonetheless, Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch was not unflawed. He accepted his appointment from Judge Taylor to represent Tom Robinson and knew from the outset that a (wrongful) conviction was next to certain. Still, he had the greater part of a year to prepare for trial.
One theory of the defense of Tom Robinson was that Bob Ewell (father to complaining witness Mayella Ewell) had inflicted Mayella’s facial and neck injuries attributed at trial to Tom Robinson. Bob Ewell was exactly the type of man who could be expected to beat his (many) children but not the type to take them to a doctor for treatment. Although the Ewells were an isolated and insular family, Atticus had generous time to find a credible (preferably white) witness to Ewell’s brutal tendencies. He had no such witness at trial.
A point raised by the defense was that Mayella received no medical attention for her rape and other injuries. In Maycomb, the doctor was Dr. Reynolds, a friend to Atticus who shared the general bigotry of the town. Atticus could have called Dr. Reynolds to reluctantly testify how a medical examination could have shed light on the infliction of Mayella’s injuries and (perhaps) determined whether she had been raped. (Mayella claimed to have been a virgin.) Atticus did not call the doctor to testify.
After Sheriff Heck Tate testified to how he was summoned to the Ewell home and then found and arrested Tom Robinson, the prosecution called Bob Ewell to the stand. On finishing his testimony on direct exam, Bob Ewell stood and walked away until he bumped into Atticus blocking his retreat. Back on the witness stand, Ewell was asked whether he could read and write. This was a reasonably clever ploy to challenge Ewell to write his own name, which he did with his left hand. This was relevant to the defense theory that bruising on the right side of Mayella’s face was inflicted by her assailant’s left hand. On re-direct the prosecutor asked Ewell whether he was “ambidextrous” which Ewell (not knowing the meaning of the word) denied prior to insisting that he could use “one hand good as the other.” Since Atticus had already taken a chance on Ewell signing his name lefthanded and since Robinson’s defense merited risk-taking, Atticus should have handed his pen back to Bob Ewell for him to scrawl his name righthanded. Atticus didn’t take the chance to show the white male panel of jurors that Bob Ewell was not above lying to them.
When Mayella Ewell testified, Atticus treated her so politely that she thought he was mocking her. He gently coaxed out of her a concession about her father’s trouble with drink. He challenged her to explain how Tom Robinson, with a useless left arm, could have overpowered her and inflicted the injuries to the right side of her face. Then Mayella became even more uncooperative. She declared that the jurors would be “cowards” if they didn’t convict and then refused all other questions. The movie version shows a sobbing Mayella racing from the witness stand as Atticus looks on in resignation. (The novel is less detailed in this aspect.) Though he had physically blocked Bob Ewell’s premature exit from the stand, Atticus did nothing to stop Mayella. Atticus must have known that the only real chance of acquittal required a recanting witness. Atticus was just too damn civil to press Mayella Ewell (a victim herself of her station in life and of her father’s cruelty) to the point of breaking her.
The lawyer that Tom Robinson had was the truest gentleman of a lawyer that fiction could imagine. But while Atticus was compassionate he lacked real passion. He was Hamlet all day long when he should have been Laertes for an hour or two. His sole action out of character came prior to the Robinson trial when a rabid dog menaced the neighborhood. Sheriff Tate handed his rifle to Atticus (once a marksman in his distant youth) and begged him to take the shot. Atticus took the shot and put down the rabid dog, for whom there was no chance of redemption. The other rabid dog of Mockingbird was Bob Ewell who felt degraded by his treatment at the Robinson trial and was bent on bloody retribution. There was by then no redemption for Bob Ewell. He had to be put down before harming the innocent. And he was put down but not by Atticus and not before innocents were harmed.
Prior to Bob Ewell’s demise he confronted Atticus in the post office and spat in his face. Atticus contemplated his view of the greater good and did nothing when he should have beaten Ewell senseless. Bob Ewell understood violence and credible threats. The impunity granted by Atticus was license for Ewell to stalk and attack Scout and Jem on their way home from the school’s Halloween “pageant.” Flawed as he was, Atticus couldn’t protect Tom Robinson from Bob Ewell and failed to protect his own children from Bob Ewell.
The lawyer that Tom Robinson needed was some demon son-of-a-bitch force of nature who leaves his civility outside the courtroom. Robinson needed a lawyer without pity. He needed a lawyer who would have kept Mayella on the witness stand until the jurors loathed her whiteness.
I hold Atticus accountable for lapses in trial strategy but not for behaving in accord with the dictates of his character. He simply could not be the lawyer that Tom Robinson needed.
A footnote of some importance.
I thought to research the issue of appointed counsel (for the indigent) in 1930’s Alabama. I thought that 1935 (the year of the Robinson trial) might have been a little early. The research led to my re-discovery of Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), which was an appeal from the “Scottsboro Boys” case involving charges against several black youths for the rape of two young white women on a train. The holding was that state defendants in capital cases (if incapable of hiring counsel or defending themselves) should be provided a public defender. The case generated huge media attention. Many held that the defendants were falsely accused. Harper Lee had to have known of this case from her childhood in Alabama.
A footnote of no importance.
In the vein of Uncle Ned’s recently posted WPA joke, Scout related in Mockingbird that the chronically unemployed villain Bob Ewell secured a WPA job and then attained local notoriety as the only man known to have been fired from the WPA for laziness.
Leave a Reply