To Kill a Mockingbird

In Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a little girl is graced with the power and apparent authority to keep a lynch mob at bay, and in front of courthouse no less. This powerful image suggests that justice and forms of law and order are typically distorted by those who would appropriate them to suit their own ends. Only the blank slate of a child’s mean is capable of perceiving this and only the sound consciousness of a child seems capable of correcting it. And yet, this correction is not made on account of courage, bravery or recklessness. Rather, it emerges from the purist residue of a child’s primitively developed mind. If this is the means by which the greatest injustices are prevented, we might consider allowing children to resolve all of our disputes. In subjugating socio-cultural niceties that we have taken for granted to the far more societally beneficial value of speaking out on behalf of injustice even where doing so seems fruitless, To Kill a Mockingbird vindicates the role of the female child in effectuating moral order.

As a child, Scout barely thinks about her actions and yet they are blissfully imbued with morality lacking on the part of her adult counterparts. It is as though Scout is impelled toward some higher moral reasoning by sheer virtue of her childhood. Indeed, the film makes clear that Scout has greatly embarrassed her father by injecting herself into his client’s defense, but the narrative nevertheless vindicates scout, thereby suggesting that social niceties are far less important to the proper functioning of any society than is the successful assertion of a moral personality. Paradoxically, the honorable Atticus who always insists upon order and law is unable to recognize the manner in which his own daughter has effectuated his desired ends, though she employs means entirely distinct from the far more formulaic vehicles of justice that Atticus would employ. In this regard, the juxtaposition of Scout’s atypical means of effectuating justice with the symbol of typical justice incarnate is a striking one.

It seems as though Scout arrives at the proper moral order without having to engage in as much critical thinking as do her elderly peers. Indeed, most of these peers have put a great deal of thought into their decision to stand before the courthouse that day. And this thought and presumably careful analysis brought to the conclusion that it would be proper to deprive a man of his life, in addition to his day in court. Perhaps then we have placed too much value in the thought and contemplation often considered necessary for the purpose of effectuating a proper moral order. Indeed, we seem to place a great deal of value in social niceties but are unable to speak to the more formative pillars of our social collection, as we witness Scout speaking out of turn to her elders and as a female child no less. These social faux pas are given far more weight in the film than is Scout’s contribution to justice, which required very little thought of her. As the film progresses, however, one begins to perceive that the filmmakers and the author intended for this disparity to be recognized not on its merits, but as a kind of condemnation of poorly focused moral resources.

On this note, Scout crosses a very line when she begins to speak to her father’s male colleagues. Atticus is, as a result, perceived as an enabler of improper behavior and, as such, as a bad parent. However, we cannot attribute Scout’s sense of justice to Atticus’ good parenting, as Scout appears to have broken with her father’s formulaic conceptions of justice in favor of more radical approaches to rectifying social ills. Accordingly, we are unable to vindicate Atticus as a parent just as we are somehow unable to vindicate his personality as uniquely moral. It appears as though Scout is the moral core of the film in that she does instinctively that which is necessary to ensure that human blood is not spilled without due process of law. In light of this, it becomes difficult to identify the place occupied by Atticus in the administration of this law. As such, we begin to glimpse a world in which the female child’s lack of social graces is made entirely irrelevant if she is willing to transgress these bounds for the purpose of bringing about fundamental justice.

With Scout firmly embedded in To Kill a Mockingbird as a kind of atypical expression of a moral order, we begin to question the extent to which the ostensibly universal core of moral order is worth propping up. Time and time again, justice is achieved in the film through non-judicial means far from any courtroom or court of law. When justice becomes impossible to achieve through the means by which we have always effectuated its ends, at what point must we look away from these rigid systems of justice as a means of effectuating justice in an increasingly unjust world? Within the context of the Civil Rights Movement, for example, it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who wished to pursue non-violent means of justice, whereas his counterpart Malcolm X did not wish for his followers to seek a seat at what he called “the white man’s table.” It was not that Malcolm X encouraged violence, as is commonly misunderstood today, but rather that he advocated on behalf of alternative systems via which certain kinds of justice can be achieved. It is the balancing of this fine line that becomes so crucial, as the film makes clear.

To be sure, there is a fine line between the attempts to seek justice through unconventional or non-traditional means and simply railing against a generalized source of unfairness with violent and unproductive rhetoric. Through To Kill a Mockingbird, this fine line is firmly delineated through Scout, a child. This seems to suggest that there is a means by which a thoughtless child can strike the proper balance in this regard. Indeed, relative to Scout’s attempts to effectuate her own ends of justice, the judicial process by which this would otherwise be achieved seems entirely ineffectual. This state of affairs almost seems to amount to a vindication of the female form, as applied to moral development. It was found long ago that young boys engage in more complicated games than do girls, who prefer games that are less rule-oriented (Gilligan 446). These findings were appropriated overwhelmingly to establish that girls develop a sense of morality later than do boys. Through Scout, it would seem that this myth has been debunked. It is thus no accident that Scout exercises her moral core within the context of a setting dominated entirely by males, whether grown or otherwise. Even Atticus, Scout’s father, seems somehow feeble in light of Scout’s insistence upon proper standards of moral order. Viewed in context, this juxtaposition is no coincidence.

While it has been argued that males are more heavily conditioned in morality from an earlier age, Scout transcends her male peers in extending her moral core above and beyond theirs and directly toward the effectuation of justice. At a time when the contributions of young ladies were viewed as extremely limited, to position an unruly young girl as the moral compass of a whole collective of seemingly ordinary citizens is quite radical and, moreover, not at all apparent upon a superficial review of To Kill a Mockingbird. Upon further review, however, it becomes quite clear that Scout not only has a great deal to contribute as a child to what grown men and women should be able to figure out themselves but that Scout also has a great deal to offer as a female child. In so positioning Scout’s character, director Robert Mulligan and author Harper Lee subjugate the socio-cultural niceties upon which we place so much value to the far more beneficial value of articulating justice in its purest form.

Works Cited

Gilligan, Carole. “Woman’s Place in Man’s Life Cycle.” Great Interdisciplinary Ideas: A Reader for Writers. Ed. William Vesterman. Penguin, 2008. 441-450

To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. Perf. Gregory Peck. (Universal Pictures, 1938). Film.