To Kill a Mockingbird.

• Author: Zwick, Peter
• Position: Book review

"I thought I wanted to be a lawyer but I ain't so sure now!" (1)

These days, most of us Americans first encounter To Kill a Mockingbird during our time in junior high or high school. (2) A favorite among English teachers of adolescents, (3) perhaps these educators find that the novel tenderly conveys a message well-suited to students in their most formative years. And though teenagers often dismiss the tastes of adults as out-of-touch with prevailing fashions, Harper Lee's Depression-era Maycomb County has, nevertheless, served as generational common ground for decades of classroom discussions. Taking a few hours of the school day to show 1962's film version (4)--a familiar and appreciated practice among teachers--goes a long way toward endearing Mockingbird to students, as well.

Over the course of this distinctively American ritual, few readers lose sight of Mockingbird's protagonist: Atticus Finch. And for good reason--Jean Louise voices Mockingbird, and Jean Louise's retrospect converges from all directions upon her father. (5) With nearly imperceptible subtlety, (6) Jean Louise--or Scout, as almost everyone calls her--spins a tale through which she draws the reader into her world of filial devotion. (7) Before we know it and before we know why, we begin to love and admire Atticus nearly as much as Scout does. Perhaps the reverence readers and moviegoers have for Atticus Finch, seemingly unrivaled throughout the rest of fiction, (8) speaks to this phenomenon.

To some, however, Mockingbird is much more than a love story. President George W. Bush expressed such a reading when, in 2007, he awarded Harper Lee the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (9) According to Mr. Bush, the novel gives an especially compelling account of the "solitary business" of courage. (10) Through its account, the President remarked, Mockingbird had "influenced the character of our country for the better." (11)

Though tributes to its richness, these two understandings come far short of exhausting all the plausible readings of Mockingbird. And while the book holds a special place for many, Atticus's would-be colleagues have been remarkably keen on Mockingbird's narrative. (12) Or, perhaps more accurately, lawyers have been remarkably keen on the story of Atticus Finch. (13)

This, in itself, does not surprise. While learning that Atticus played a central role in the lives of his young children, readers also learn that Alabama admitted Atticus to the state bar, (14) and readers follow his professional exploits throughout many of the most suspenseful parts of the novel. Certainly, lawyers tend to appreciate a good war story, (15) and Mockingbird does not disappoint seekers of legal drama. (16)

But Atticus is far more than Jack McCoy, Michael Clayton or Elle Woods. Atticus is a reason people become lawyers, (17) and, once they become lawyers, Atticus is the person many lawyers aspire to be. (18) Some attorneys even point to Atticus Finch not merely as a model of lay courage--as President Bush seems to understand the character (19)--but as an aspirational standard of professional conduct. (20) And to say that Atticus is the favorite lawyer of American lawyers, even though he never actually existed, runs little risk of overstating the case. (21)

Yet, how appropriate is the reverence for this imagined colleague? We have only Scout's account to go on, after all, and while a classically unreliable narrator Scout is not, is it possible that her loving account so moves a reader that it captivates his judgment, as well? (22) Unquestionably, young children easily fail to see glaring flaws in their parents' characters, and slightly more discerning older children may willingly overlook the same out of devotion. Has Harper Lee's success as an author--skillfully drawing readers into a child's enchantment for her only living parent--obscured Finch's failures as an attorney or, perhaps more importantly, as a man?

Some commentators seem to think so and have skeptically questioned Mockingbird's usefulness in the moral education of lawyers. Throughout the mid to late '90s, and the first half of the last decade, Atticus Finch experienced a fall from grace in the legal literature. During this time, various commentators attempted to brush away the loving gloss Scout heaps onto her father's escapades and to evaluate Mr. Finch's actions from as objective a perspective as possible. (23) Under this scrutiny, the Atticus that emerged was not an especially attractive attorney, for most, or man, for more. And while some critics have remained relatively collegial, merely denouncing the character as unrealistic, "sanctimonious," or "boring," (24) others level considerably more pointed criticisms. Far from a lawyer-hero, they argue, Finch "indulge[s] ... the tendency to prejudice, and [is] almost amused by the Ku Klux Klan." (25) A number of detractors even suggest that Atticus was complicit in Jim Crow southern racism, (26) or that he, himself, engaged in racist exclusion. (27) In the past year, this type of criticism has begun to trickle out of the law reviews and into the popular press. (28) This is not to say, however, that Atticus no longer finds proponents among the ranks of legal scholars, (29) but the volume of professional criticism directed at Atticus indicates that in this particular war over an icon's soul the tide may have turned in favor of the iconoclasts.

As tempting as taking up sides in the conflict may be, a thoughtful reading of Mockingbird exposes the debate, I think, as misguided. Concededly, I find Atticus a morally problematic character, and I believe that his shortcomings only come into focus when one recognizes the extent of the narrator's proclivities. However, to assume that moral flaws within the character contravene the novel's worth for lawyers may be to maintain a hardly self-evident conclusion without support. If Mockingbird never holds out Atticus as a paragon of virtue, proving that he either is or is not an archetypically moral and professional attorney is, at best, an oblique observation that does little to prop up or tear down the character's overall value to legal professionals.

In this brief Comment, I offer a reading of Mockingbird that is surprisingly absent from the debate over Atticus Finch. Part I suggests that instead of painting Atticus as a picture of righteousness, Scout's account of her father's responses to southern racism tells a story of contrasts. Invariably, the children at the heart of the novel--Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill--have strong, visceral reactions to injustice. Atticus, on the other hand, tends to capitulate soberly, despite obvious uneasiness. Part II argues that Atticus's profession makes him especially susceptible to this sort of compromising. Mockingbird, Part II concludes, should serve as a cautionary tale: a story especially pertinent for lawyers who, because of their shared profession, have vulnerabilities in common with Atticus Finch.

1. "You AREN'T THIN-HIDED, IT JUST MAKES YOU SICK, DOESN'T IT? " (30)

   The story of Atticus, his children, Tom Robinson and Maycomb County is such a well-known one that an elaborate retelling here would be of little use. Let it suffice to say that at some time during the 1930s, Atticus Finch, a general practitioner in small-town Alabama and a widowed father of two, finds himself the court-appointed lawyer of an ostensibly innocent black man, charged with raping a nineteen-year-old white woman. The charge carries with it a death sentence as a matter of course, and, while Atticus has tried capital cases in the past, (31) he finds this one to be especially troubling. (32) Nonetheless, he accepts the appointment and resolves to put forward a zealous defense of his client, although he has little hope for an acquittal. (33) Atticus's hesitancy proves to be warranted--and then some--as the trial of Tom Robinson incites a firestorm of controversy in the segregated county, which jeopardizes not only his professional and social status, but his life and the lives of his young children.

   Through it all, Atticus maintains an even-keeled poise and, at times, shows remarkable valor. When authorities transfer his client to a vulnerable holding cell near the courthouse, for example, Atticus defies a lynch mob while armed with nothing more than a newspaper and a quiet sense of rectitude. (34) Not simply intrepid in the face of mob violence, he accounts ably for himself in court, as well. Any other attorney in Maycomb, one character concludes, would have been at a loss in the Robinson case. But Atticus, in a trial unwinnable for the defense, was "the only man in [those] parts who [could] keep a jury out so long in a case like that." (35) And he accomplished as much not with theatrics or melodrama, but with unassailably polite decorum, at all times respectful of the court as an institution of justice. (36)

   But Mockingbird is more than just Atticus, and a reasonable assessment of the book and any of its characters would take into account the forest, and not simply fixate on an especially tall tree. If the debate over Finch misses anything, it misses the other half of the novel: the half that prominently features siblings Scout and Jem and, to a lesser extent, their friend Dill. Unless these characters serve merely as props to facilitate the drama surrounding Atticus--a proposition, by the way, that finds scant support outside of legal academia's implicit endorsement (37)--it stands to reason that critiques that take into account nothing in the novel but Atticus fail to contextualize, and suffer from a certain over simplicity. If he wishes to make a fair appraisal of the novel's value as a moral compass, a reader should consider not just Atticus's actions in a vacuum, but the rest of Mockingbird's narrative, as well.

   1. Atticus: A Man Apart

      Upon moving beyond Atticus to the context that surrounds him, one thing becomes clear immediately: the man is remarkably...