"Kill a Mockingbird" | The first collision of teenagers with the world

"So far, nothing in your life has conflicted with your logical reasoning."

After the lawsuit failed, lawyer Atticus said this to his son Jem, who was in a state of grief and confusion because of the court's unfair verdict.

This is the most worthy of reflection in the novel: people's lives inevitably have to face unfair treatment such as power bullying, black and white reversal, public opinion attacks, identity discrimination, etc., and may also face dilemmas, which will have a huge impact on the concepts we have shaped since childhood.

1

We may learn the most important principles of life at the age of ten, and we will struggle to support it for the rest of the years.

The novel uses special perspectives to describe the plot in many places, the most typical is to spy on the adult world from the perspective of the girl Scout, observe the environment in which she is located, as well as the people in the environment and the people outside, and constantly explore outward:

Maycomb in the 1930s was an old and dreary Southern Town, with dilapidated county government buildings, weeds on the side of the road, memories of always hot summers, black dogs tormenting in the summer, the sultry oak shade of the square, skinny mules driving away flies, and the ground was always muddy on rainy days.

People are slow to act, and doing everything is like passing the time.

But beneath the surface of peace, there is a complex human nature - a child who acts recklessly, a lawyer father who is upright and humble, a stubborn old woman, a mysterious and terrible strange person, a long-tongued woman who manipulates right and wrong, a savage mountain man... Here, man seems to be divided into multiple classes, each distinguished by family, and even in the cognition of children, there are stereotypes of class: the Canning family, the Radley family, the Haverford family, the Yuell family, and so on.

Such an ordinary town can be found in any corner of the world, but the townspeople always think that their lives are unique.

In small towns, people's codes of conduct are bound by the habits handed down from ancient times, and the way of life left behind by the ancestors forms a shackle that imprisons people's thoughts and behaviors.

This shackle may not be all the blessing of the ancestors, but it may also be the trend of life set by some kind of emerging social advantage group (economy, power, etc.), so that they compete to imitate.

The people under this bondage were complacent, presenting themselves as "ancient nobles", dividing people into three, six, and nine, and all those who were not shackled were classified as inferior, so Jem said that the inhabitants of Maycomb were divided into 4 classes: "The townspeople, the Cunningham family in the mountains, the dirty and ignorant Yuel family, and the lowest blacks." ”

Children are born with the ears to catch the wind and shadows, and add the details they hear and see to the imagination, and conceive of the prototype of the world exclusive to them, in this prototype, they constantly absorb everything from the outside, fill in the structure, think and deliberate, until this weak world gradually takes shape.

But the world they reasoned will eventually have a huge impact, shattering it to pieces, some children assimilated by the outside world in the ruins, and some children reinforcing their own worlds in the process of rebuilding again and again.

Scout grew up with his brother Jem in this environment, and both drew some kind of wild power from this barbaric land, but under the gentle education of their father, their wild nature was neutralized by kindness, making them curious about the outside world and keeping themselves.

In this self-consciousness, they are accustomed to the ignorance, savagery, rigidity, and viciousness of the people around them, are good at finding people who are incompatible with the small town of Maycomb, and are eager to explore the existence of these people:

Living in the rumors of the neighbors, arthur Radley, a strange man with violent tendencies, blood drinking, and sleeping by night; Miss Caroline, a new teacher who tries to educate her students with formulaic education but is brutally resisted; her father, who is gentle and calm but shows sharpshooter skills in the mad dog crisis; and the stereotypical and stubborn old lady Dubos who resolutely quits morphine dependence before dying.

Combining the exploration of the outside world with the teachings of their father, the brothers and sisters gradually formed a set of crude values, they experienced the goodwill in the oak hole, realized the backwardness and ignorance of Maycomb from the outside perspective, learned to remain calm in anger, remained bold in calmness, and saw the true courage of faith.

As the book says, "True bravery is when you know you're going to lose before you start, but you still have to do it, and you stick to it no matter what." ”

2

The first half of the novel is a foreshadowing, with the injuries of his brother Jem and the clouds of doubts all over the strange man Radley, and the portrayal of a class-conscious, racially stereotyped town from The Perspective of Scout, so that atticus, the lawyer who defends black people, is vilified by the whole town.

Through Scutter's perspective, everything is detached from its solidified impression: sin is hidden in ignorance, goodness is hidden in vicious rumors, hypocrisy is exposed by innocence, courage guides pure hearts, and justice awakens the consciousness of ignorance.

The second half is the climax of the plot, dealing with themes such as law, justice, race, goodness, education, and evil.

The novel begins with Jem's broken arm, echoing to the atrophied and crippled left arm of Tom, a black man during the lawsuit; Jem's left arm is shorter than his right arm, symbolizing some of the things he lost forever after he broke his arm as a child, but thankfully the lost part did not affect him.

So, what exactly did Jem lose? Who is the robin?

"Robins only sing to us, they don't do anything bad, they don't eat the flowers, fruits and vegetables in people's gardens, they don't make nests in corn silos, they just sing for us wholeheartedly, which is why it is a sin to kill a robin."

Tom is a robin, but his kindness and pity become the root of his own destruction, and Maycomb does not allow a black man the right to sympathize with white people.

Arthur is a mockery, gentle and courageous, and Atticus tries to make his son Jem justify his murder in order to cover up his righteous murder.

Jem is also a robin, a robin who was saved on the brink of life and death.

The three are as good, as innocent, as the same in the face of destruction, and what threatens their lives is atrocities, public opinion, and ignorance, which makes their different fates more thought-provoking.

In fact, everyone is a mockingbird, as Scout puts it: "Atticus used all the legal means that could exonerate a free man to save Tom, but in the secret court of the hearts of the people, Atticus had no lawsuit at all." ”

Everyone has their own judgment standards in their hearts, but this set of moral codes is extremely easy to assimilate by the outside world, and every child who is assimilated by the outside world and destroys his goodness is an innocent robin.

In my opinion, what Jem has lost is the illusory hope that young children have for the world.

This prayer was originally a bubble-like illusion laid down by adults for children: adults demanded that children stay away from evil, forbid obscenity, and remain innocent.

But adults do not realize that every adult is raised by a child, and what they experience and transform will eventually fall on every child.

The foam laid by adults will eventually be punctured by themselves, and children will only have a short time to prepare for the ugly reality before the protective film disappears completely.

From the failure of the lawsuit, to The shooting of Tom, to the attack of Yuel, a series of blows have brought Jem a lack of justice, blind slaughter, bottomless atrocities, and under this unprovoked evil, whether the goodness taught by his father is still necessary, and how to resist the atrocities with good intentions.

Atticus's advice to Jem was to think, but in fact his answer had already been given: "Something is absolutely out of the crowd, and that is the conscience of man." ”

At the end of the article, Scout stands in Arthur's doorway, looking through the scenery of Maycomb, remembering his father's words: "You have to put on a person's shoes and walk his way to truly understand a person's heart." ”

It's reminiscent of Dill's leisurely sigh: "Maybe he (Arthur) has nowhere to go." ”

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