Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
Well, I have begun. As I started, I felt like I was sittin' on someone's side porch, listening to stories about their family from long ago-- there's so much atmosphere. But I didn't make it very far in before I stopped reading altogether. On p. 11 (I believe y'all can see the edition I'm using to the left), Scout is telling the story of how Boo Radley stabbed his dad in the leg with scissors, then he got arrested but "[t]he sheriff hadn't the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, so Boo was locked in the courthouse basement." Seriously. What sort of messed up logic is that? I remember that this book was about Racism with a capital R, but it's small acts of bigotry that really hack me off. He's totally insane (who DOES that?!?) but oh noes, they can't put him in regular people jail because he might be tainted by people with differently colored skin.I hope the basement was full of large, scary spiders.
posted by edh at 4:45 PM
3 Comments:
That story is strange.
We really do live in different times. I can't see the same outcome for parental abuse in this day.
I haven't read enough of the book yet to be able to judge if that was her intent, but I would guess she would make a comment like that because A) it's accurate to the time and place, and B) she wants us to have an outraged reaction. It's much more effective when you react with outrage yourself than are told you should be upset.
I flew right past that incident with nary a thought. Perhaps I've just adopted the mindset that "I'm reading a novel about the pre Civil Rights Movement South," and accepting that appaling displays of racism are going to be talked about as matter of fact occurences. Two things have jumped out at me so far, however: 1. the odd dichotomy between the matter of fact racism, and the amazing sensitivity that is often shown by the characters for other people's dignity, such as Scout's standing up for Walter Cunningham in class, and Calpurnia's scolding of Scout for her treatment of Walter at the beginning of the next chapter, and 2. the subtext of violence that already pervades the novel, from the scissor incident already referenced and all of the mysterious goings on inside the Radley house, to the ominous classroom conflicts of Scout's first day at school.
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