Literary Criticism
Literary Criticism of The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and Southern Liberalism, by Malcolm Gladwell: The New Yorker
By Paulina Oswald
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
~Martin Luther King
Picture this: A world in which the people who fought for African Americans’ right to vote in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, actually fought violence with violence and hate with hate. It would be a much more different world. There may have even been another civil war on our hands. But Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of fighting the hate with love stopped that, and African Americans won the right to vote without any undue bloodshed.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s article criticizing Atticus Finch’s character from To Kill a Mockingbird, Gladwell says, “At one point, Scout asks him if it is O.K. to hate Hitler. Finch answers, firmly, that it is not O.K. to hate anyone. Really? Not even Hitler?” And I say yes, not even Hitler; it is not good to hate any person, regardless of how many bad things they have done. This is because people can always change. True, Hitler killed many people and caused World War II, which in turn killed many people, but that doesn’t mean he won’t feel remorse for it later.
Furthermore, hating is basically a waste of energy. A good analogy of this is the weather. You can hate the weather, but that won’t really change it. The best thing you can do is calm down about it, and put on clothing that will protect you from the weather. By accepting the weather, you can calmly overcome it without being unproductive and complaining about it, cursing it and carrying on and on about how much it has ruined your plans. Life is much easier this way.
An example of this is when in To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee describes the scene in which lawyer Atticus Finch camps out in front of Tom Robinson’s jail cell. Tom Robinson is the black man he is defending, and Atticus does this in case some passionate people who disagree with him defending Robinson try to harm him. Atticus ends up being right and a mob made up of white farmers turns up. They try to convince Atticus to move aside so they can get to Robinson and possibly lynch him, which was common in that time. But Atticus refused. His children, meanwhile, were watching this going on and his youngest child, Scout, ran up to Atticus because it “was too good to miss.” She was too young to understand that she could be in danger.
Scout looked around for someone she knew in the crowd, and she found Mr. Cunningham, whom Atticus helped out when he had an entailment problem. Atticus respected Mr. Cunningham, and believed he was honest because he was a farmer and didn’t have much money, but still paid Atticus back the only way he could—with the produce that he grew. Scout said hello to Mr. Cunningham, but he didn’t say hello back. She tried again and spoke of his entailment, but there was still no response. So she attempted to start a conversation about his son, and how he was a nice boy, and received only a nod from him. In one final effort to talk to Mr. Cunningham, she said, “Entailments are bad.” It was this that took the mob out of Mr. Cunningham, it was this that made him an individual human being, rather than this single-minded uniformal beast that the mob was. Scout’s comment made him stand in Atticus’ “shoes for a minute. That was enough.” This shows that a small child powered by love, not hate, was able to have more effect than a large mob of angry and hateful grown men. And that is why love is stronger than hate, and why with using love, we can get our goals accomplished much better and easier than with using hate.
However, Malcolm Gladwell is criticizing this by saying that when Atticus is explaining to his children that Mr. Cunningham is “basically a good man,” who “just has his blind spots along with the rest of us.” Gladwell says, “Blind spots? As the legal scholar Monroe Freedman has written, ‘It just happens that Cunningham’s blind spot (along with the rest of us?) is a homicidal hatred of black people.’ ” In some ways I disagree with this statement. It is basically what Harper Lee is trying to say, but for one additional piece: What Atticus means is people are not one hundred percent good, and people are not one hundred percent bad, and some people are raised to think a certain way, such as Mr. Cunningham thinking that black people are inferior to white people. This does not mean Mr. Cunningham is a bad person. This is very similar to a Harry Potter quote in The Order of the Phoenix. Sirius Black says to Harry Potter, “The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters [bad people]. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.” Mr. Cunningham is a human being with “light and dark inside of him.” He chose to act on the good side that night with the mob. Yes, he did have a blind spot in hating black people, but he overcame it. And that is why Atticus still respects him.
Another thing that I disagree with in Gladwell’s criticism of To Kill a Mockingbird is when he is speaking about the court scene where Atticus defends Tom Robinson. Atticus lost the case and Gladwell says that “Finch gathers his papers into his briefcase. He says a quiet word to his client, gathers his coat off the back of his chair, and walks, head bowed, out of the courtroom… If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.” Is Gladwell saying that this is a bad thing? Is Atticus supposed to be “brimming with rage?” I don’t think he should.
Atticus knew from the day he was appointed this case that he wasn’t going to win. When he told Scout this, she asked why he was going to do the case if he knew he wasn’t going to win. Atticus said, "If I didn't I couldn't hold my head up in town, I couldn't represent this county in legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again." What Atticus means by this is he would try his hardest to protect Tom Robinson, like he would his own children. If he didn’t even try, he couldn’t have been able to bring himself to discipline his children. He would feel like a failure. This is why Atticus wasn’t angry. He also knew that the jury was made up of farmers who were mostly biased against Tom Robinson, and Atticus knew he could get an appeal later, with a new set of jury members. Also, instead of fuming at the injustice of the situation, Atticus may have been sad about what Gladwell mentions that is from To Kill a Mockingbird, a “sickness.” Gladwell says, “He forgives the townsfolk of Maycomb for the same reason. They are suffering from a ‘sickness,’ he tells Scout—the inability to see a black man as a real person. All men, he believes, are just alike.” Atticus may have been sad after the trial that so many people could be so blind, or have the sickness.
In this rapidly changing world, there are so many things you can love and so many things you can hate. With the development of internet and high speed modes of transportation, we can learn easily what is happening at the other side of the world. Some of what we learn can be shocking, and our first impulse may be to hate what we hear and see. But even though it is shocking, it is still a part of this world, and it would be unwise to spend our time and energy on hating it, rather than understanding it fully and trying with all our hearts to change the situation for the better, for everyone. The fact that a white lawyer was defending a black man was new and different to everyone in Maycomb, Alabama and if Atticus had been angry, that anger may have kindled events grievous to imagine. Instead, he dealt with this situation with love and he understood both sides of the conflict. With the people of a town who had their own set of beliefs as well as the fact that Tom Robinson had exactly the same rights as the townspeople, Atticus was able to “trace [their] poison to its bud, and root, and there uproot it.” (Edna St. Vincent Millay) Besides the fact that everyone will be angry and Atticus wasn’t going to win, he took the case anyway, and tried to get everyone to see that condemning a man without any sufficient evidence, just the color of his skin, is wrong. Sort of like killing a mockingbird.
By Paulina Oswald
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
~Martin Luther King
Picture this: A world in which the people who fought for African Americans’ right to vote in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, actually fought violence with violence and hate with hate. It would be a much more different world. There may have even been another civil war on our hands. But Martin Luther King Jr.’s message of fighting the hate with love stopped that, and African Americans won the right to vote without any undue bloodshed.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s article criticizing Atticus Finch’s character from To Kill a Mockingbird, Gladwell says, “At one point, Scout asks him if it is O.K. to hate Hitler. Finch answers, firmly, that it is not O.K. to hate anyone. Really? Not even Hitler?” And I say yes, not even Hitler; it is not good to hate any person, regardless of how many bad things they have done. This is because people can always change. True, Hitler killed many people and caused World War II, which in turn killed many people, but that doesn’t mean he won’t feel remorse for it later.
Furthermore, hating is basically a waste of energy. A good analogy of this is the weather. You can hate the weather, but that won’t really change it. The best thing you can do is calm down about it, and put on clothing that will protect you from the weather. By accepting the weather, you can calmly overcome it without being unproductive and complaining about it, cursing it and carrying on and on about how much it has ruined your plans. Life is much easier this way.
An example of this is when in To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee describes the scene in which lawyer Atticus Finch camps out in front of Tom Robinson’s jail cell. Tom Robinson is the black man he is defending, and Atticus does this in case some passionate people who disagree with him defending Robinson try to harm him. Atticus ends up being right and a mob made up of white farmers turns up. They try to convince Atticus to move aside so they can get to Robinson and possibly lynch him, which was common in that time. But Atticus refused. His children, meanwhile, were watching this going on and his youngest child, Scout, ran up to Atticus because it “was too good to miss.” She was too young to understand that she could be in danger.
Scout looked around for someone she knew in the crowd, and she found Mr. Cunningham, whom Atticus helped out when he had an entailment problem. Atticus respected Mr. Cunningham, and believed he was honest because he was a farmer and didn’t have much money, but still paid Atticus back the only way he could—with the produce that he grew. Scout said hello to Mr. Cunningham, but he didn’t say hello back. She tried again and spoke of his entailment, but there was still no response. So she attempted to start a conversation about his son, and how he was a nice boy, and received only a nod from him. In one final effort to talk to Mr. Cunningham, she said, “Entailments are bad.” It was this that took the mob out of Mr. Cunningham, it was this that made him an individual human being, rather than this single-minded uniformal beast that the mob was. Scout’s comment made him stand in Atticus’ “shoes for a minute. That was enough.” This shows that a small child powered by love, not hate, was able to have more effect than a large mob of angry and hateful grown men. And that is why love is stronger than hate, and why with using love, we can get our goals accomplished much better and easier than with using hate.
However, Malcolm Gladwell is criticizing this by saying that when Atticus is explaining to his children that Mr. Cunningham is “basically a good man,” who “just has his blind spots along with the rest of us.” Gladwell says, “Blind spots? As the legal scholar Monroe Freedman has written, ‘It just happens that Cunningham’s blind spot (along with the rest of us?) is a homicidal hatred of black people.’ ” In some ways I disagree with this statement. It is basically what Harper Lee is trying to say, but for one additional piece: What Atticus means is people are not one hundred percent good, and people are not one hundred percent bad, and some people are raised to think a certain way, such as Mr. Cunningham thinking that black people are inferior to white people. This does not mean Mr. Cunningham is a bad person. This is very similar to a Harry Potter quote in The Order of the Phoenix. Sirius Black says to Harry Potter, “The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters [bad people]. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.” Mr. Cunningham is a human being with “light and dark inside of him.” He chose to act on the good side that night with the mob. Yes, he did have a blind spot in hating black people, but he overcame it. And that is why Atticus still respects him.
Another thing that I disagree with in Gladwell’s criticism of To Kill a Mockingbird is when he is speaking about the court scene where Atticus defends Tom Robinson. Atticus lost the case and Gladwell says that “Finch gathers his papers into his briefcase. He says a quiet word to his client, gathers his coat off the back of his chair, and walks, head bowed, out of the courtroom… If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.” Is Gladwell saying that this is a bad thing? Is Atticus supposed to be “brimming with rage?” I don’t think he should.
Atticus knew from the day he was appointed this case that he wasn’t going to win. When he told Scout this, she asked why he was going to do the case if he knew he wasn’t going to win. Atticus said, "If I didn't I couldn't hold my head up in town, I couldn't represent this county in legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again." What Atticus means by this is he would try his hardest to protect Tom Robinson, like he would his own children. If he didn’t even try, he couldn’t have been able to bring himself to discipline his children. He would feel like a failure. This is why Atticus wasn’t angry. He also knew that the jury was made up of farmers who were mostly biased against Tom Robinson, and Atticus knew he could get an appeal later, with a new set of jury members. Also, instead of fuming at the injustice of the situation, Atticus may have been sad about what Gladwell mentions that is from To Kill a Mockingbird, a “sickness.” Gladwell says, “He forgives the townsfolk of Maycomb for the same reason. They are suffering from a ‘sickness,’ he tells Scout—the inability to see a black man as a real person. All men, he believes, are just alike.” Atticus may have been sad after the trial that so many people could be so blind, or have the sickness.
In this rapidly changing world, there are so many things you can love and so many things you can hate. With the development of internet and high speed modes of transportation, we can learn easily what is happening at the other side of the world. Some of what we learn can be shocking, and our first impulse may be to hate what we hear and see. But even though it is shocking, it is still a part of this world, and it would be unwise to spend our time and energy on hating it, rather than understanding it fully and trying with all our hearts to change the situation for the better, for everyone. The fact that a white lawyer was defending a black man was new and different to everyone in Maycomb, Alabama and if Atticus had been angry, that anger may have kindled events grievous to imagine. Instead, he dealt with this situation with love and he understood both sides of the conflict. With the people of a town who had their own set of beliefs as well as the fact that Tom Robinson had exactly the same rights as the townspeople, Atticus was able to “trace [their] poison to its bud, and root, and there uproot it.” (Edna St. Vincent Millay) Besides the fact that everyone will be angry and Atticus wasn’t going to win, he took the case anyway, and tried to get everyone to see that condemning a man without any sufficient evidence, just the color of his skin, is wrong. Sort of like killing a mockingbird.