"For truth is ofttimes strange; stranger than fiction," the poet Lord Byron stated. And one of the greatest, most poignant of American novels is laced with such simple and complex truths that it touches us with a tender light and sears us with a penetrating fire.
Harper Lee was born on this day, 28 April, in the year 1926. "To Kill a Mockingbird" was the only book she wrote, perhaps because it was not a book, but a life. There is sweetness in it, innocence, kindness and goodness. There is crudeness and cruelty, hatred and suffering, as the elements of society and the fundamental elements of mankind open to our almost reluctant view the great mysteries of the soul, and the power of good and evil in human life.
Mystery — love is always a mystery of sorts. And this is a love story, as Harper Lee, herself, called it. And at the heart of that love story is the man around whom everything else in the book revolves: Atticus Finch.
What do we find in Atticus that we desire, admire, and cling to? First and foremost, we see a man who knows who he is, and is comfortable with the standards of life he has selected, by which he lives. Those moral standards have brought him peace within and faith and trust without — and he knows he must live by them, or they will cease to be of value to him, or to the people he loves. What is more, he does not mind living by them, because they are so deeply ingrained in his thoughts, his desires, his actions, that they have become him, and he is what he believes in and honors.
In chapter nine when he is attempting to explain his actions and decisions to his daughter, Scout, she asks why he is defending the Negro, Tom Robinson, when he doesn't "have to".
"For a number of reasons," Atticus answers her. "The main one is, if I didn't I couldn't hold up my head in town, I couldn't represent this county in the legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again."
Scout struggles to understand this, and so do we. In this sloppy, permissive society in which we find ourselves, it seems we must struggle daily for our integrity — rebuilding, reshaping, restrengthening it in order to stand half as upright as this man.
He was real; he suffered disappointment, ridicule, fear and injustice. And he lived with loneliness. The children's mother, though dead, is a presence amongst the three; subtle, but pure. She is vague in Scout's mind, and she wants to know that her mother loved her which Jem, who remembers, patiently confirms. We get the impression that she is with Atticus, that her influence is part of what he has made of himself yet, at the same time, he accepts, with patience; and that acceptance, too, is part of what makes the man. He respects life in all its forms — and that includes all kinds of people — and he respects what life has brought to him, good and bad.
This is powerfully portrayed in the summation speech Atticus delivered to the jury. Knowing beforehand the near surety that he and Tom Robinson would lose, yet he gave unstintingly of the best within himself. As Jem explained to Scout, "He spends his time doin' things that wouldn't get done if nobody did 'em."
While accepting the nature of his neighbors, yet he hoped — he offered them a chance, an opportunity to dig deep within themselves and discover something good and noble that would bless them as well as the accused and trapped Tom.
After a brilliant as well as logical summation of the case, and of the potential power and reliability of the court system, he concluded, "Gentlemen, a court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty!"
Duty was still the sacred reality that Abraham Lincoln expressed: "Let us have faith that right makes right, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it."
A genuine humility was a generous part of Atticus' strength. When the Reverend Sykes says, "(Scout), stand up, your father is passing," there is no pretense of humility on the part of Atticus; indeed, if anything makes him uncomfortable, it is attention and praise. Beyond duty and even humility, we go back to love. We see the people of Maycomb — each remarkable individual from Calpurnia to Dill to Mrs. Dubose — as through his eyes, the eyes of compassion, and that is why this book is filled with beauty.
Boo Radley conjures up every mystery, terror and wonder inherent in the world of childhood. When Scout sees him suddenly as her father has always seen him, that purity of understanding which children possess makes her able to say to herself, "Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives." She was able to say to her father after she had heard the two men discussing Boo Radley, "Mr. Tate was right. It'd be sort of like shooting a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"
And with the simplicity of those who are truly at peace within and need feign nothing in life, Atticus stops in front of Boo Radley and says, "Thank you for my children, Arthur."
Atticus may be human, but he is the ideal. In the commentary accompanying the DVD film version of Mockingbird the question is asked: Where are his successors? Where on earth would he flourish?
This is a crucially relevant question today. We like to think he might do fairly well here, in the midst of LDS families and LDS men; Mormon elders. Surely we have the wherewithal to raise up men of this caliber — we possess principles and powers meant to breed the highest of qualities in the sons and daughters of God — not just Nephi's and Ammon's, Sons of Helaman, Moroni's and Joseph Smith's—but thousands upon thousands of ordinary Latter-day Saints striving to purify and perfect our lives.
Are the successors of Atticus among us? While our culture has given children permission to not respect, not care, when all moral protections have been removed from them, are we giving them examples of honor and integrity by which they can truly and successfully live?
"Honor," taught Akhenaton, the great Egyptian king, "is the inner garment of the Soul; the first thing put on by it with the flesh, and the last it layeth down at its separation from it."
If Atticus can do it, I can do it! Have you ever thought that? Walter Lippmann said, "A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so." There we have Atticus Finch. There we have the power, the love, the ideal.
As one man said reverently: The novel itself is the mockingbird's song.