Standard Of Review: Going Back to High School (Not Literally) To Revisit 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

Is Atticus Finch portrayed as too much of a paragon of moral virtue?

When I told someone recently that I wanted to review the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird for my weekly column, the response was:  “What can you possibly say about it that hasn’t already been written?” That is a great question! The 1960 novel by Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize and is a staple of high school reading lists. Indeed, I read the book for English class during my junior year of high school (and have not read it since). However, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lee have been in the news lately due to the forthcoming publication of Go Set a Watchman, a sort of sequel to Mockingbird that will be released on July 14 and has been shrouded in controversy. Assuming that Watchman is sufficiently legal in nature, I plan to review it later this summer. But in the meantime, I decided to revisit Mockingbird, to see if I could come up with any sort of original thought about the novel.

If you have not yet read To Kill a Mockingbird, you either had a negligent English teacher or you acted like a normal teenager and “read” the book’s CliffsNotes or Sparknotes (or whatever high schoolers these days instead of actually reading the book — Snapchatnotes?). But for those people, the novel is narrated by protagonist Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, a young girl living in Depression-era Maycomb, Alabama. Scout spends much of the novel on various adventures with her brother Jeremy “Jem” Finch, who is four years her senior. Scout and Jem become obsessed with reclusive neighbor Arthur “Boo” Radley, a local man who has not been seen for many years. The moral center of the film (and arguably the most famous character) is Scout and Jem’s father Atticus Finch, a widower and a local lawyer. Atticus is called on by the local judge to defend Tom Robinson, an African-American man accused of raping and beating Mayella Ewell, a white woman. The book depicts how Atticus attempts (and fails) to shield Jem and Scout from the racial tension in the town before, during, and after Tom’s trial (this column contains spoilers for the entire book but I don’t feel that bad — it is not like I am spoiling whether Colin Farrell’s mustache will last through the entire season of True Detective).

As I mentioned above, I had not read the book since I was a junior in high school, during the halcyon days of yore when Chicago inexplicably won Best Picture and when some people (i.e., some of my less discerning classmates) actually thought “Sk8er Boi” was a good name for a song. My memory of the book mostly involved Tom’s court case, and so I had forgotten just how few pages the trial takes up. Nevertheless, those chapters are very moving. The trial is obviously narrated from Scout’s perspective, as — unbeknownst to Atticus — Scout and Jem secretly watch from the balcony. To Jem, Atticus is clearly a talented lawyer and has done everything in his power to poke holes in the prosecutor’s case and to create a reasonable doubt in the juror’s mind. For example, Atticus is able to establish that the person who punched Mayella was likely left-handed, and that Mayella’s father Bob Ewell was also left-handed. Atticus also eviscerates Mayella’s story, showing that it is more likely than not that she is lying. It is heartbreaking to see Jem so confident that Atticus will be successful, without realizing that the pervasive racism in the town will surely cause Tom to be found guilty.

As I read the trial scenes, I could not stop thinking of the book’s epigraph, which consists of a quote from Charles Lamb:  “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.” Jem’s childlike naivete prevents him from understanding the legal, racial, and political nuances of Tom’s trial. And I, as a lawyer, have become jaded by the legal process to the point where I will never recover my childlike view that law allows justice to prevail.

As Tom’s attorney and as a man portrayed as always doing the right thing, Atticus is often considered to be one of the best characters in literary history (strawman argument alert!). However, upon re-reading the novel, I couldn’t help but think that Lee portrayed Atticus as too much of a paragon of moral virtue. The best characters in art all have shades of grey; there is a reason why most people like Han Solo better than Luke Skywalker (Luke would never have shot Greedo first). Lee hints at some additional depth to Atticus’s character (for example, he shoots a rabid dog and has prowess as a marksman), but never fully follows through. Of course, part of this problem is that the narrator of the book is a adolescent, providing a classic “unreliable narrator” problem. It may be that Atticus is more three-dimensional, which is never apparent to Scout. Nevertheless, I still wish that Lee had given Atticus some additional flaws that were more apparent to the reader.

I had forgotten how well Lee depicts the relationship between Scout and Jem. Sibling relationships are not the focus of many books, television shows, and movies (think about how many famous protagonists are orphans or only children or have a one-dimensional siblings). But when done right, a strong sibling relationship (of the non-Jaime and Cersei Lannister variety) can be extremely moving. For example, a few months ago, Grantland’s Chris Connelly made the argument on Bill Simmons’s podcast (RIP B.S. Report) that the popularity of the Disney film Frozen was not due to the songs, but instead due to the strong sibling relationship between Anna and Elsa at the core of the film (and I would argue that this relationship is precisely why (hot take alert!) “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” is a better song than “Let It Go”).

Lee expertly portrays the progression of a sibling relationship over time. As the book begins, Jem and Scout are virtually equals, as Jem consistently allows her to play with him. But even towards the beginning of the book, Jem is a great older brother outside of school, but inside of school request that Scout not fraternize with him. And as Jem becomes older and matures, his relationship with Scout begins to fray. Jem gets very moody, and stops playing with Scout as he pursues “older” activities such as football. As an older sibling, I empathized with Jem’s desire to “grow up” and to increasingly ignore a younger sibling that he finds to be increasingly juvenile.

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Clearly, I do not have any revolutionary insight regarding the novel that no one has thought of over the last 55 years. Nevertheless, despite my criticism of Atticus’s seeming infallibility, I was surprised about how much I enjoyed re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird. If anything, it was certainly a better use of my time than the hour of my life spent watching this past Sunday’s season premiere of True Detective (my suggestion on how to improve the second season of True Detective? Embrace the Vince Vaughn/Rachel McAdams Wedding Crashers reunion and hire Bradley Cooper for the Taylor Kitsch role and Jane Seymour for the Colin Farrell role).


Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at harrygraff19@gmail.com. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.

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