![]() Dubose’s blossoms, his admission that next time he would pull the bushes up by their roots, and his ambiguous “fingering” of the flower at the end of the chapter with considerable symbolic import. These associations imbue Jem’s destruction of Mrs. They take on deeper symbolic resonance when we realize that the camellia is not only the state flower of Alabama but is also associated with the Knights of the White Camellia, a Ku Klux Klan-like organization, founded in 1867, to enforce white supremacy in the South. Dubose herself when Jem, in response to her insults, decapitates the Snow-on-the Mountains that border her porch. They serve as something of a stand-in for Mrs. At one point Lee juxtaposes them with Mrs. Perhaps more important, the lesson examines the symbolic import of the camellias Mrs. Most certainly, though, students will connect her to the Confederate South through the CSA pistol she is rumored to hide beneath her shawl, and the lesson does explore that. Students are unlikely to recognize that association, however, and illustrating it would almost require another lesson, so it goes unexplored here. Dubose a taste for the novels of Sir Walter Scott, whose romantic visions of aristocracy and gentility shaped the Old South’s image of itself. One way Harper Lee establishes this association is to give Mrs. Dubose represents the traditional order of the Confederate South. ![]() The lesson’s text analysis explores her meaning as a symbol and her function in the town.Ĭlearly, Mrs. ![]() Henry Lafayette Dubose, a minor but important character in the story. It concludes the largely idyllic portrayal of Maycomb we see in part 1 and deepens the foreshadowing of the tragedy we encounter in part 2. “Maycomb’s usual disease” has many causes, but surely, Atticus must be aware of its historical roots, if for no other reason than that a vocal embodiment of that history holds forth just yards from his own home.Ĭhapter 11 is a critical section of the novel. ![]() It suggests a peculiar innocence in a thoughtful, well-read man who ought to know better. 117) This is a curious admission for the “Maycomb County born and bred” lawyer who knows his people. It is essentially a lost cause thanks to “Maycomb’s usual disease.” “Why reasonable people go stark raving mad,” he laments, “when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand.” (p. We first become aware of Atticus’s blind spot when he explains the Robinson case to his brother. On the other hand, however, it is a problem because it denies him the critical distance needed to place those shortcomings and foibles in any larger moral context. On one hand, this is commendable because it enables him to know the town’s residents as individuals and to make allowances for their shortcomings and foibles. 6) For Atticus the community of Maycomb is essentially a web of personal relationships. Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town.” (p. “He liked Maycomb,” the narrator tells us early in the novel, “he was Maycomb County born and bred he knew his people they knew him…. Analyzing that chapter, this lesson offers students the opportunity to develop a critical perspective on Atticus’s judgment and character.Īt the outset it is critical to emphasize how deeply embedded Atticus is in Maycomb. They might profitably have focused on chapter eleven, for there we learn that Atticus suffers from a moral blind spot, which prevents him from fully acknowledging his community’s racism. How could the character who was so enlightened in his original incarnation, set in the 1930s, become so bigoted in his second coming, set in the 1950s? Readers and critics scrutinized Mockingbird to see if the Atticus who defended Tom Robinson contained the seeds of the Atticus who twenty years later joined the Klan-like Citizens’ Council. ![]() Readers who found him to be an exemplar of tolerance and courage in To Kill a Mockingbird were shocked to hear him voice racist views in Watchman. The publication of Go Set a Watchman in 2015 focused considerable attention on the moral vision of Atticus Finch. (Page numbers refer to the 1982 Grand Central Publishing paperback edition.) ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.4 (Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.).ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.3 (Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events.). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |