To Kill A Mockingbird

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WICKES

Here in the UK it is just the same- instead of studying Chaucer, Wordsworth, Keats, Dickens, Shakespeare etc and being taught to take pride in the literary heritage of this island, at my sister's school the kids study 'multicultural poetry' (i.e free verse garbage by 3rd rate poets) with an added dose of guilt and shame at Britain's colonial past. I think Harold Bloom is quite right to accuse modern academia of having been hijacked by the politically correct, anti 'dead, white European' mob.

---

We were forced to do rubbish like that at school. It is the quality of writing and emotion that I find important in a novel, not whether it's political enough.

Its themes are hardly subtle- they're flagged up. Innocence. Prejudice. Hypocrisy. And Atticus is a preacher. His speech in the courtroom is so long and cliched that he might as well have sung 'Ebony and Ivory'

Quote:

---

I also find it a rather fault on the American education system that they teach this book so widely.

---

I agree with you that this book is widely taught (and admired) more because its heart is in the right place than for any literary merit it might have.

And the book is not really all that progressive, not even for 1960, when it was published. It is therefore "safe".

But I can see its usefulness in the classroom. It has lots of potential for opening up discussion. Past standards versus current standards, the issue of condescending whites, self-empowerment versus paternalism, that kind of thing. It's a straightforward narrative written in a kid's voice, which makes it accessible.

It also has a bit of unexpected moral complexity right at the end, the stabbing. The sheriff "cleans up" the crime scene, suppressing evidence by pocketing the second knife, and the (ridiculously) upright Atticus goes along with this highly questionable end-run around the justice system. So the book is not quite the smug morality play it might seem.

It's coz it all fits into their neat little life motto