Quotes in this entry are from the following article:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/features/4691912.html
This article is about To Kill a Mockingbird and the legitimacy of it’s inclusion in the literary canon. This entry may be meaningless for those of you who have not read the book, but there somewhat of a description of it in the article that could help. The author of the article asks these questions:
“So what’s its appeal? Why a fixture on school reading lists? And what’s its status in the canon of American literature? Is it really a book for grown-ups?”
These questions interested me and I eagerly read until finally reaching the author’s answers:
“I don’t find either Atticus or Scout particularly plausible. The black characters are long-suffering and large-hearted in a way that, today, comes across as condescending. Scout too often sounds like no child I ever met — too smart, too spunky.”
That isn’t his entire conclusion but it seemed to be most of it. I don’t believe that answers all of even most of the questions. It seems to me that the author wrote all about the book and led up to possible answers and ended up merely stating his distaste for the book. Despite that, this article brought to mind some interesting arguments about literature and learning.
Must the characters in literature really be believable? I say not at all. While the author of this article seems to the the unbelievability is a bad thing, I see it as quite the opposite. Scouts purity and intelligence seem to be as constants in an experiment. They are isolated factors that make way for the moral lesson. With a more realistic character the lessons of the book would not have been nearly as clear. I also find that in order to best make a point extremes must be used. “Larger than life” characters make for a much more obvious point. Exercising your mind is similar to physical exercise. In martial arts, you start out learning exaggerated motions so that your muscles can better learn. Once you have learned enough, your muscle memory is such that performing just the right amount of motion is easy. I find the two to be quite similar and that is why I believe literature characters can and sometime should be made unrealistic in order to better prove a point.
The entire point of literature is that it is hypothetical, so I do agree that characters needn’t be “realistic” all the time; real people are boring! I like books that have those kinds of larger than life people and places.
All the time I hear people saying that characters need to be real for students to relate to them, but I guess that’s never been important to me. When characters are real and do silly things and make mistakes, I mentally wince when I’m reading the book.
However, back to the topic: I liked “To Kill A Mockingbird.” I think it does have a place in the literary canon. But that might not stop it from being an “adult” book. I know quite a few high school students who did not particularly appreciate it. I do not think this is because the students do not find the characters “real” enough, I think it is because the story is not compelling for the average 15 year old, and English teachers insist on being too Englishy about it.
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