I took a look at the book To Kill a Mockingbird and the simple truths within. I focused on the four big topics of discrimination, culture's effect on life, integrity, and empathy; mostly through Scout's view of Atticus and the life around her. I found myself going into the simple things that are known to the characters and the lessons that Scout is learning as she grows up. I tried to relate this to our own lives as the readers of this text, and have explored the multiple ways that these large topics become integrated into our lives. Note to reader: MLA format is irrelevant because of the way this program sets up text. Please enjoy.
Eyes Wide Shut
The dictionary definition of truth can be summarized to be a state of reality or fact. Simple truths are things that are easily forgotten as people are going through their lives. People often forget that even the most basic, simplest things of life can be wonderful gems. The simple truths of life are found when we least expect them and when we stop looking for them. If the focus of someone is to find everything that inspires them in life right away, they will often lose what really inspires them, but if one were to take a step back, and open their eyes, they may just find that the most beautiful things in life - the simple truths - are right in front of them. Atticus often says things about how he views things as truth in his own life. At one point he says, “There’s nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who’ll take advantage of a Negro’s ignorance” (Lee 296). Atticus is constantly showing his children what it is to look for the things in life that make them happy - to be inspirations to the townspeople and to love every moment they are alive. He teaches them that there is more to living than simply going through the motions. Atticus Finch is the first person of many in the town to teach his children that they need to open their eyes to the world around them. As we, the reader, read To Kill a Mockingbird we find ourselves growing up with Scout and Jem Finch. We find that as they grow, they learn more and have their eyes opened to the world around them, the good and the bad of it, just as the reader does.
Atticus wants to make sure that his children know what it is to have integrity. He may never define it right out, but he always is showing them what it looks like, one could say leading by example. Atticus never once tries to teach his children that it is an option to have integrity, it is an expectation. He says, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win” (Lee 101). Scout finds that she looks up to her father because of his integrity; that he is never going to give up on what he believes simply because the initial outcome may not be what he wants to see. She is drawn to how he carries himself through life, always thinking the best of everyone, and never doing anything that would cause someone to question him. It is because of his strong convictions to the things that he is passionate about that causes the town to look up to Atticus, and to look up to his children as well because of the way that Atticus has raised them. Scout sees other people’s opinions of her father, just as we can with our own parents. She sees around her how everyone loves and respects Atticus just as much as she does, and it solidifies that the way that she looks at him is in a correct light.
Atticus teaches his children countless lessons throughout the book helping them see the world in the correct light. He helps the see the troubles of discrimination in the time period and the things he deals with everyday at work. He teaches them that simply because someone is different from them, there is no excuse to treat them any differently than you would someone who is the same as you. As the trial with Tom Robinson unfolds in front of us, we watch the characters struggle with the issues of race and discrimination. Even when we see Calpurnia take the children to her church with her, we see the discrimination from blacks to whites and around again. One of the women from her church says, “You ain’t got no business bringin’ white chillun here - they got their church, we got our’n. It is our church, ain’t it, Miss Cal” (Lee 158)? Scout and Jem see that while most people talk about the discrimination against the Black culture, there is a discrimination from them to these white children. In the case with Tom Robinson, we see that the jury was racist against Tom because he was a black man. There was a code already set in place for them to follow, even if they all knew that he was innocent. Jem was greatly confused by this as he says, “Doesn’t make it right. You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that - you can’t” (Lee 295). Atticus explains to Jem that simply because we want things to happen, or be one way, things sometimes just can’t be. Atticus is never willing to give up on this case, which is one of the reasons he took it. He knew what was right, and he wasn’t going to let someone tell him differently.
Atticus enjoys the tactic of raising his children to let them come to conclusions with little guidance. He wants them to see and experience something rather than him telling them what they are to learn from the situation. Atticus is a strong man, a strong character, and the way that he teaches his children empathy is to help them see the way other people see things. He talks to Scout about how she needs to see the world through different eyes. As we read her new experiences, we see her growing up and seeing things through different eyes. When we are children, we know things, simply because we “know everything”, yet as we get older we have our eyes opened to the world. She looks back and says, “It was the first time I had ever walked away from a fight” (Lee 102). As Scout grows, she experiences more things that help open her eyes. She sees how challenging it can be for her small family to make it through the attacks against her father for supporting Tom Robinson and even for her and Jem to continue to be children in this crazy life. She has her eyes opened to the pain of everyone in the town as they try to sort out the black and white truth while still attempting to remain the “family” that the community is. The things that she learns help shape who she will be as she grows up, just as they do for the reader. Scout is constantly trying to see the best things of people, yet she finds that it can be difficult to do. The Tom Robinson case trial is one of the first times the reader sees how challenging it is for the characters to deal with the horror of growing up. Scout remembers, “Dill exhaled patiently. ‘I know all of that, Scout. It was the way he said it made me sick, plain sick’” (Lee 266). This is the first time the reader has the chance to see how being so empathetic is effecting Dill. He truly loves people and wants the best for everyone, and the poor treatment of another human being is driving him to be physically sick. As humans, we feel things when we experience or see something painful or saddening. This moment in the novel is one that every reader can connect to - the pain of watching someone be treated so terribly that we are simply unable to bear the pain and suffering they are enduring.
Atticus explains to his children why the Tom Robinson case ended the way it did. He explains to Jem that there are certain rules set in place about the case. The rules that are in place for the different races of men - the blacks and the whites. He explains that whether we agree or not, these rules are things we have to learn to deal with it. He tries to explain how the culture that the kids are growing up in works, but they have their own idea of what it means to live in Maycomb. Scout says, “Finders were keepers unless the title was proven. Plucking an occasional camellia, getting a squirt of milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson’s cow on a summer day, helping ourselves to someone’s scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, but money was different” (Lee 47). She and Jem grew up with a system like this. They do what they want, but are always respectful of others as they are doing it. Their focus is not on the world or their culture changing them, but them defining what culture is going to be for them. These children do not consider their culture their community, they consider their community their culture. Atticus was hardly the only one to raise these children, almost the entire town adopted them as their own to protect and love. Scout and Jem never think anything strange about Cal being their cook and nanny, even though she’s a Black woman. They don’t question their father about why he has a Black woman, and they love her just as much as they love Atticus. They refuse to let the idea of “culture” come into their precious town with how close and wonderful it is. The town and lifestyle they have grown up with is a loving one where children are spanked if they do something bad, yet they learn to respect the people of the town. It isn’t until Aunt Alexandria comes into the picture that we see there could be a flaw with Cal being Atticus’s cook. She seems to believe that it isn’t right for an upstanding white family such as theirs to have a black cook working for them. The children then begin to see the differences in the way they have lived the first several years of their lives and the way Aunt Alexandria grew up. These differences make the children look around them with a different perspective, wondering why exactly their family has to be different from everyone else in the town that has a black cook.
The children find their views on life change as their eyes are opened. Scout begins the story just like any small child, being sure of everything she knew, yet still questioning the unknown. She grows up just like any child does and begins to open her already wide eyes to see what is really contained in the world around her. She lives her entire childhood with eyes wide shut - the idea that until we grow up with certain events, the way we see the world is not that of mature eyes, but that of a child - willing to take in everything, but understand nothing. Scout learns empathy, integrity, what exactly culture is, and how to make the best of discrimination in To Kill a Mockingbird. If there is anything that the reader can do after concluding this book, it would be to take a look at their own lives and possibly look again with open eyes instead of the idea of eyes wide shut.
