Paying it forward. That is what one of my former students, Dr.
Frank Lopez, did for me. He knew my wife and I were visiting New York City, and
he made sure we would be attending Broadway’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Why it mattered so much to Dr. Lopez is that
it was the novel I taught him (and other high school students for 32 years) and
because his son Lex would be reading Mockingbird
that year. So it was that Harper Lee’s novel and Horton Foote’s Academy Award
winning screenplay was brought to life in Aaron Sorkin’s new play, and my wife
and I along with his family were witness to the courtroom drama.
I was reminded that evening by Dr. Lopez what an impact the
heroic Atticus Finch had on him, as well as the tragedy that befell Tom
Robinson because the topic of social justice was a motif in my classroom,
sometimes dubbed “The Metaphor Café.” As we leaned forward in our seats that
evening to hear Atticus Finch once again battle the ignorance “of a tired old town,”
I looked at two generations of students—a doctor and his son, and wondered how
this new version of Mockingbird would
be received.
However, this Atticus Finch, played by Jeff Daniels, is not
portrayed as a shining white knight; rather he is a simple country lawyer used
to handling land disputes and wills. He discovers he is powerless against the
forces of ignorance that prevails then…and now.
For those who do not recall the details, Finch takes Tom Robinson’s
case, knowing that both were beat “before they started”—victims of the 1930’s
racism that is all too familiar today. I will not repeat depressing statistics
of black incarceration or the systematic injustice in America’s courtrooms that
is evident to this day, despite what some felt President Obama’s election could
rectify—namely, a post-racial society. One man’s election, no matter how
historically significant, has not changed intransigent racist attitudes.
With that in mind, Aaron Sorkin’s version of To Kill a Mockingbird challenges its audience
that is far too complacent with the outcome of Harper Lee’s disheartened
Atticus Finch and bullet-ridden, doomed-from-the-start, Tom Robinson, to
imagine a scenario in which the Finch’s maid Calpurnia redefines the novel’s theme.
At the outset, Atticus reminds his children, Scout and Jem,
and generations of American students, that one has to “step into his shoes” to
understand a person. Nobel in words, but Calpurnia makes it dramatically clear to Atticus that “understanding” the
virulent hatred and violence that racism breeds in the antagonist Bob Ewell and
the vast majority of Maycomb, Alabama’s white citizens (and by extension the Deep
South) justifies their ignorant behavior. Jeff Daniels, in an interview, explains
that his character is “an apologist.”
Yes, Atticus’ defense of Robinson is courageous and an act
worthy of admiration. That is undebatable. His motive is equally compelling as
he tells his daughter Scout his personal reason for defending an obviously
innocent man so many others attack because of the color of his skin, “You have to
learn to live with yourself before you can live with other folks.”
However, in both the novel and the film, Atticus stops short
of physical action, other than standing guard at the courthouse when the town’s
racist men seek to take justice into their own hands with a noose. Atticus
symbolically stands at the door holding only a book which will not stop the
henchmen. What stops them? Guilt. Guilt that is stirred up by his children who
remind the men how much they owe their father and what he has done for them in
their time of financial need. The voices of children who stubbornly refuse to
move reminds the angry men that they are still human.
Sorkin decides it is time for his hero Atticus to respond,
in deeds and promises of future actions. Atticus fights back, physically, with
the threats of Bob Ewell—something he refuses to do in the novel because he
argues that letting Bob Ewell blow off steam and save face ”would save Mayella another
beating.” This is a pivotal moment and Sorkin’s signature that it is time for
Atticus to put a stop to one man’s threats.
Mayella Ewell, the sexually abused daughter, is trapped in a
lie and a society that views her as white trash. She, too, is a victim—a mockingbird
who, like Robinson, sings out, only to draw the hunter’s attention. And hunt
they do. I’m reminded of a line that Horton Foote added to the film absent in
the novel: Atticus turns to Jem, who has just witnessed his father being
ridiculed, and says, “Son, I’d like to keep you from all the ugliness in the
world…but that’s just not possible.” Indeed.
And that is just the point Sorkin drives home, as deeply as
Boo Radley plunges a kitchen knife into the heart of the novel’s antagonist. “We’ve
got to stop this right here and now,” Atticus Finch demands to a faceless jury.
“It has gone too far.” Aaron Sorkin is making that same argument; dignity
demands that ignorance no longer be tolerated. Not now. Not ever again.
Metaphorically, this play is about just how long this nation
will remain apologists, enablers of racist policies of The New Jim Crow, documented by the distinguished writer Michelle
Alexander. History will not look kindly to this
jury if America continues to show malice towards those mockingbirds that “sing
their hearts out for us.” This Atticus
Finch aims to show us the way and reminds us, again, “That it is a sin to kill
a mockingbird.”
When the curtain came down that evening, and the audience
stood, my eyes locked on to Dr. Lopez. There was so much to say and so little
time to say it. So this is my time. I hope when Dr. Lopez’s son Lex engages in
a class discussion about the characterization of Atticus Finch that he
remembers words really do matter, but actions speak louder than words.
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