Halfway Through "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Well, I'm back to talk about To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee again. Technically, this post isn't being written of my own volition, but it's fine. I might've written it anyway.
Moving on, I just keep liking this book more and more. I really connect with Atticus, but I'm not entirely sure why. I just read about him and everything he says to Scout and Jem and I just feel it in my heart. He tries so hard to do right by them, but people keep trying to tell him how to raise the kids.
The rest of this post is going to be a bit different in organization. To make things easier for me, I'm going to just create separate sections for each of the questions I have to answer. It differs from the last post where I kind of just answered my questions in some paragraphs and in a different order than what my assignment says. I don't have the energy for crafting a piece with satisfying transitions today. Sorry.
Calpurnia:
Now, this is a character I barely acknowledged in my last post. She is the other character I was assigned alongside Boo Radley. Well, Boo was barely mentioned in these chapters so Calpurnia became my main focus.
In chapters 10-14 (inclusive), we get a much deeper look into Calpurnia. One of her most important scenes happens in this part of the book. Calpurnia takes the children to her church one Sunday. She starts speaking in a way that surprises Scout. She has never heard Calpurnia speak so "quietly" and "contemptuously" (119). We see examples of Calpurnia changing the way she speaks when she is around other African-Americans. When Scout questions Calpurnia on why she does this, her response is "Now what if I talked white-folks' talk at church, and with my neighbors? They'd think I was puttin' on airs to beat Moses" (126).
Calpurnia is doing something known as code-switching. She knows how to speak standard English, but she
chooses to use a different dialect in church to avoid conflicts with people. She knows that it would cause people to treat her differently.
Another thing that I wondered about as I read about Calpurnia was how racial differences and systems of the time affected her relationship with the Finches. Calpurnia refers to Jem and Scout as her children (118) and Atticus says Cal is a "faithful member of this family" (137). I was curious if Cal thinks of them as her family, too. I was wondering if she makes a distinction between her family and the Finches. There are obvious reasons that she might not, such as prejudices and the fact that she was employed for them.
Discussion:
During our discussion, we talked a lot about Calpurnia's code-switching. I won't really go on about that any more since I brought it up in the previous section. Other than that, we talked a lot about Atticus and another one of his lessons to the kids about empathy.
Jem ruins the old Mrs. Dubose's flowers, so Atticus has Jem apologize. To make up for his actions, Jem has to read to her everyday. Jem hates doing it because of how cruel Mrs. Dubose always is to him and Scout. When
she dies, Atticus reveals that she was a recovering morphine addict. This fact is what made her so awful to the kids. She was struggling so much with her withdrawal that she lashed out. Atticus wants Jem to see her as someone who was brave and ill, not innately malicious.
This is just another way that Atticus teaches his children to walk in a person's shoes before making a judgement.
Questions for the next Discussion:
1) Does Scout feel that Calpurnia is a part of the family? She has never come out and said what she believes. She only ever talks about how strict Cal is or what she does.
2) What could push Atticus to be confrontational? Throughout the book, he has always been very mellow and he has never made a point of arguing with anyone. I want to know if there is anything that really could push him over the edge.
And that's all I have for today. I hope you enjoyed!
Au revoir,
Abby