“N
Adie can bathe twice in the same river, ”said Herraclito de Ephesus (535-484 ac). The same happens with a book when we read it again. In this regard, what follows is an abbreviated version of a chapter of my recent book Reading is navigating.
I read several years ago Killby Nelle Harper Lee. Then I ignored almost everything about its author, I also did not invest on the historical context in which the novel takes place or stopped data around the year in which the book was published (1960). I returned to the aforementioned work, I read it carefully, looking at the description of the social/cultural environment and the characters involved in the plot.
The novel that suddenly named Harper Lee at the top of public recognition passes during the thirties of the twentieth century, a period in which the effects of the great depression initiated in October 1929. The economic crisis caused bankruptcies of banks and companies, drastic decline in the consumption of goods and services, unemployment, reduction of wages and increased poverty.
Harper Lee’s childhood is evoked in the character named Jean Louise Finch (Apode Scout) in Kill. She, almost six years, along with her brother Jeremy (10 years) and Dill (the infant Truman Capote, neighbor of the house adjacent to that of the Finch, and a year older than Scout), live for three years, especially in summer, intense adventures in Maycomb, Alabama.
The name of the town in the novel replaces Real, Monroeville, where the trio lived intensely and the warm friendship between them was literally captured in Lee’s work, the same as in the first novel of Capote, Other voices, other areas (from 1948).
Scout, Jem and Dill moved through the small town of Maycomb, in which almost all its inhabitants knew each other. The ecclesial affiliation of the population was mostly baptist or methodist. Maycomb/Monroeville describes Scout as an ancient and fatigued population. Life was slowly, “the day was twenty -four hours, but it seemed longer. No one was in a hurry because there was no where you would go, nothing to buy, no money to do it, there was nothing to do outside the limits of Maycomb County.”
When Scout was eight years old, in 1935, the life of the town was disrupted because Tom Robinson, Afro -Estradidense, is accused by the White Mayella Ewell of having raped her. Robinson was a member of the same church in which Calpurnia, domestic employee at Finch Family House, the First Purchase African Methodist Episcopal Church. The temple owed its name (First Purchase, first purchase) that was acquired with the first earnings of released slaves settled in Maycomb.
Scout’s father, lawyer Atticus Finch, takes the case of Robinson, so she asks why he agreed to defend the defendant, Atticus replies: “All I can say is that when you and Jem are adults, maybe see all this with some compassion and a certain feeling that I did not disappoint them. This case, the case of Tom Robinson, is something that reaches the very essence of the consciousness of a man […] Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help this man. ” Kill The Finch family was a member of the Methodist Church. Harper Lee as a child attended the first United Metodist Church in Monroeville.
The widower Atticus Finch had frequent conversations with their children, particularly with Scout, whom he patiently explained why he should strive to understand both his neighbors and schoolmates. This is how he tells him about identifying with other people before issuing judgments about them: “One never really understands another person until he considers things from his point of view, until he gets into his skin and walks with her.”
In Kill Harper Lee tells, from the perspective of Scout, the details of the trial: testimonies of those who accuse Tom Robinson of rape, action of the district prosecutor, reactions of the judge and the jury (composed only of white men). Atticus eloquently presented evidence of Tom Robinson’s innocence. The squeezed audience listened to the lawyer’s sagacity to show that racial prejudices of whites cover up the truth of what happened in the case that shook Maycomb. Robinson was unanimously declared guilty.
At the end of the trial, the Afro -Stadnens silently looked, from the place designated for the “people of color”, to Atticus put in the portfolios the documentation he used to defend Tom Robinson. Then, Scout tells, “someone gave me a light punch, but I was reluctant to remove my eyes from the people down, and the image of the lonely Paseo de Atticus in the hall. Lady Jean Louise? I looked around. Everyone was standing. [Escuché] The voice of Reverend Sykes: Miss Jean Louise, stand up. His father passes. ”
I also stand up before Nelle Harper Lee, because he bequeathed a literary piece in which light on intolerance, racism and Protestant/evangelical religiosity that succumbs to prejudices and lets himself be dragged by the current of white supremacism.
