The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book about one of the most widely read novels in modern American literature, which may be of interest to students of literature, law, sociology, and history. Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters: What Harper Lee’s Book and the Iconic American Film Mean to Us Today is about To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It is shelved in the General Stacks of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus. The TU Library owns different editions of To Kill a Mockingbird. They include copies of the original English language novel and also a Thai translation published in 2018, Khā Mǫkkingbœ̄t, translated by Nālanthā Khup.
The story of To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936. The narrator of the tale is Jean Louise Finch, a six-year-old girl. Her father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer who behaves admirably when faced with challenges. For this reason, TU Faculty of Law students may be interested to read it. In America, many lawyers claim that they were inspired to choose the legal profession after reading To Kill a Mockingbird or seeing the Hollywood film that was based on it, released in 1962. In the film, the role of the honest lawyer Atticus Finch is performed by the American actor Gregory Peck.
Among the themes of To Kill a Mockingbird are racial inequality, courage, empathy, and gender roles in the American South. It is an argument for tolerating people who may be different from us. The book’s title means that unfair legal procedures may destroy the innocence of children. To Kill a Mockingbird cites a proverb that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, since the mockingbird’s sings pleasantly and does no harm, so like children, it is also innocent. Mockingbirds are noted for imitating the songs of other birds and the sounds of insects and amphibians. They are called mockingbirds because one of the meanings of the adjective mock is imitation, artificial, fake, or false. In Northern Thailand, there is a species of myna bird that also imitates the songs of other birds, changing them slightly. The mockingbird found in North America, referred to in the title of To Kill a Mockingbird is the northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos).
The novel also quotes the British author Charles Lamb, who lived in the 1700s and 1800s: Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. The TU Library owns books by Charles Lamb. The meaning of this quote in the context of To Kill a Mockingbird is that lawyers often see human behavior at its worst. Unlike children, they are not innocent. But they may be able to recapture the ideals of an innocent mind, if they try, since they too were once children. This idea may help lawyers remain dedicated to justice and right-thinking, despite many challenges.
Among the other ideas of the novel is the importance of empathy, or trying to understand how a different person may feel. The lawyer Atticus Finch states:
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
If we try to imagine what someone else may be going through, even if their experice is completely different from our own, we may begin to understand what life is like for that person. We may still disagree with people, as Atticus Finch observed:
They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… 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.
If we stand up for our principles, we cannot expect that everyone will be happy. Some people may even be very displeased and criticize us. But as Atticus Finch notes:
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.
There is a value in making an effort to do the right thing, even if it is not likely that we will get the result we hope for. Atticus Finch has a comment about that situation as well, using the slang term in American Southern speech to lick, meaning to defeat:
I wanted you to see 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… I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up… The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash… But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
Many different readers have found the message in these words to be inspiring, and To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into 40 languages.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)