What happens if you kill a mockingbird

Take too much work. I figure that will get me through. It covers the years from , when the Second World War engulfed Europe, to , when the author died at the age of One change, surprisingly, was that when the couple was forced to retreat to their rural Sussex home, Monks House, after their London apartment was shattered by a German bomb, their lives slipped into a pleasing, productive, almost dreamy rhythm.

Away from the epicenter of the blitz, rid of servants and a social life, they were free to work and garden and simply be. On Oct. No one coming. No servants. Dine when we like. Living near to the bone.

So Leonard Woolf got busy. But instead of exploring the contours of his grief, he gives us tedious digressions about his work with the Fabian Society and the Labour Party, the Political Quarterly , the Nation and the New Statesman , the running of Hogarth Press, including lists of titles published. In the last year of the war, when Ian was in the Air Force in France, Trekkie stayed with me at Monks House , and I had helped to negotiate the lease of a house for them in nearby Iford into which they moved as soon as Ian was demobilized.

They spent weekdays together, then Trekkie went home to her husband on weekends. Ian and Trekkie were still in love and they danced beautifully together and threw lively parties, at which he played the banjo. He gave Trekkie gifts — a Constable sketch, a Rembrandt etching, jewelry. Is this reticence, this pretense at probity, an English thing — stiff upper lip and all that rot? Or is it something simpler and more venal — dishonesty masquerading as discretion?

It is, in short, a lie. All three of these memoirs, as different as they are, share a common thread. Loss may be permanent, but grief, it turns out, is not. The unthinkable is not invincible.

She, unlike Joyce Carol Oates and Leonard Woolf, understands that if you want to write about yourself, you have to give them something. Actually, Didion understands a far larger and deeper and darker truth.

She understands that if you want to write about your grief, you have to give them everything. I have loved To Kill a Mockingbird both book and movie since I was 6 years old.

I never saw the reference to be about just Tom Robinson. What happened to Boo Radley? It seems to me the mockingbird reference was about him in the story as well. It was not that limited to me to be referring to just one character, but to multiple characters and to the loss of the innocence of children. Harper Lee would have been aware that mockingbirds are no more innocent a symbol than Confederate flags or monuments to Stonewall Jackson. Only her characters and her readers missed the joke.

So, while you nod to the Migratory Bird Act, you proceed to advocate the killing of mockingbirds as a crusade against their insidious inter-species role in promoting white-on-black racism? Or is your target simply the heritage of the old South? Either way, Congrats! Mockingbirds are Confederate gray. Blue jays are Yankee blue.

That is the bottom line. Personally, I think mockingbirds are worthless P. Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Related Books:. The Millions' future depends on your support. That could only be said if you have never been being kept up all night by its melodious but very, very loud warbling. And you wouldn't be the first one to feel murderous, but be forewarned, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of protects the mockingbird and all migratory birds.

They cannot be killed, wounded, hunted or harassed. A co-worker, who knows a lot about food and was being tormented by a "mocker" singing all night long, sent a desperate e-mail musing about looking up some recipes. This evening he or she went off for so far an hour with the accompanying song.

It seems birds from around the hood are chirping in, so to speak," she wrote Saturday night. She sent a clip of the bird singing. It is the soundtrack of the video above. And of course what sounded like birds talking amongst themselves, was a lone mocker, as they are sometimes affectionately referred to. The jury specifically, and the town of Maycomb generally, destroy a good person who has never done harm simply because of the color of his skin.

Though Tom is the symbolic mockingbird at the heart of the novel, he is not the only character who fits that description. Heck Tate also specifically describes Boo Radley as a mockingbird, in that he is a harmless person who is the victim of pointless cruelty. Unlike Tom Robinson, Boo Radley is not destroyed, though he does suffer greatly.

In Chapter 11, Atticus shoots a mad rabid dog in the street. This episode serves two important purposes in the novel. Before the incident with the dog, Scout and Jem saw their father as old, reserved, and not particularly powerful. When Scout and Jem learn that their father is known as the best shot in the entire county, they learn to see Atticus with a greater sense of respect. In a larger symbolic sense, the dog, because it has rabies, is a dangerous threat to the community.

In shooting the dog, then, Atticus is trying to protect the community from its most dangerous elements. Similarly, in defending Tom Robinson, Atticus tries to protect the community from its most dangerous, racist tendencies. In the first sentence of the novel, Scout says that Jem broke his arm.

She starts to explain what happened but says that she needs to go back and provide the necessary context in order for the story to make sense. Jem breaks his arm in the struggle. While initially the reader might assume Jem broke his arm through innocent childhood games, by the end of the novel we understand the darker, more complicated truth behind the accident.

In the early chapters of the book, Jem and Scout find several small items, ranging from sticks of gum to a pocket watch, left by Boo Radley in the knothole of a tree on the Radley property. These gifts are the first of several kindnesses that Boo extends to the children, ultimately culminating in Boo killing Bob Ewell to protect Jem. The gifts also represent one of the ways that Boo tries to engage with the world around him without giving up the secrecy and privacy that he requires.

I wonder what he might tell us that our narrator, young Scout, does not know. When I think of To Kill a Mockingbird , the bird that comes to mind is not a mockingbird at all. It is the proverbial canary in the coal mine another one of those phrases we don't think about very much.

The treatment of Tom and Boo as they face the spoken and unspoken dictates of Maycomb gives life to the stock image of the canary. These two canaries expose the fragility of democracy when prejudice, myth, and misinformation go unchecked. In the years since its publication, the title "To Kill a Mockingbird" has developed a meaning that goes beyond its internal logic. For many readers, the book and its characters live with them as intimates. The story offers a reflection point for the moral dilemmas we face in our own lives.

As if to prove the point, a colleague recently brought me a bumper sticker that makes me smile every time I think about it. It asks, "What would Scout do? Transform how you teach Harper Lee's classic novel with Facing History's multimedia collection, "Teaching Mockingbird.

Written by Adam Strom.