To Kill A Mockingbird Read-Along, Part 3
August 1, 2013 8 Comments
Adam of Roof Beam Reader is organising a read-along for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I got this book last Christmas but I haven’t read it yet. And since I’m not from an English-speaking country, we never had to read it in school. So here’s my chance to read and discuss it with others.
=== SPOILERS ===
For this third and final check-in, we read chapter 22 to the end of the book.
I read this a few days ago, and it didn’t really “stick”. I remember parts 1 and 2 quite well, but what happened after the court case?
Ah, Jem is sorely disappointed in humanity, but later, it turns out there are townspeople who support Atticus and things don’t look quite so bad any more. Except… poor Tom Robinson! Stupid Tom Robinson! It was far from certain that Atticus would get him free in an appeal case, but there was the chance he would. What was the chance Tom could run off like that and come away unscathed?
The story with Jem and Scout coming back from the school in the dark was hard to follow, but then, Scout was telling it and she, covered up in her ham costume as she was, didn’t really know what was going on herself. I loved that we finally got to see Boo Radley, and it was touching how Scout treated him.
This was a coming of age book in which both Jem and Scout learned a lot about the people around them and about the world in general. I enjoyed it a lot.
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It’s interesting to read your thoughts! I can understand why Tom Robinson did what he did. He thought he was dead either way, despite Atticus’ optimism about the outcome of the appeal. It was 1935, and his life was in the hands of Alabama state court appellate judges. So, Robinson chose the faster path to what he thought was the inevitable result.
AMB, I’m sure you’re right. I am a hopeful person and think: as long as there is a chance, you should not give up. But I can understand that Tom didn’t see it that way – he didn’t really think he had a chance. Do you think Atticus was naive in thinking Tom really had a chance to get through this?
Well, the odds of a successful appeal are always slim, but particularly so if you’re an African American man convicted of raping a white woman in the American South in the 1930s. Robinson’s case is similiar to the Scottsboro Boys, a real-life case that began in 1931. It started in the Alabama state courts, which wrongly convicted the defendants and sentenced all but one to death, and then went up to the U.S. Supreme Court (which takes very few cases per year), which overturned the convictions and granted a new trial. In the end, after a very long process (multiple trials), most of the young men were still convicted and given long sentences, but spared the death penalty. They were certainly not the only African Americans tried on similar charges, and my guess is that few men in these types of situations were even as successful as the Scottsboro Boys were (and their case is known as an American tragedy). So, yes, there was a chance Robinson would have been successful on appeal, but it was a long shot.
Thanks for the explanation, AMB. I don’t know about the Scottboro case but it doesn’t surprise me, unfortunately.
I need to re-read (or even better,re-watch the movie!) – it is a classic here for good reason.
Care, it certainly is. It reminded me in some ways of John Steinbeck – same era, something about how the people interact. And… John Steinbeck is a favorite of mine!
Loved this book. I think it helped that I didn’t read it at school, most of my friends who did have a very different opinion! Funny what studying a book intently can to do your feelings for it.
Sam, it might well make all the difference! Books we *have* to read at school hardly ever become our favorites.