Second Time Around

I first read To Kill a Mockingbird for GCSE English, so (ulp) a mere thirteen years ago. At the time, I thought it was very good, but with the caveat that it was hard to write about, when compared with the symbolism replete throughout Macbeth and Lord of the Flies, the other two major texts we studied.

Re-reading it has been extraordinary. No wonder it is in the top novels that people re-read, according to this guardian article. Yet re-reading is often because it will provide comfort; we know how the story ends, and the torment beforehand is worth it for the resolution. Here, the resolution is not that justice is done, and that makes it unbearable - I know what's coming, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it. If anything, it's worse this time around.

But the book itself is wonderful, so rich in wry and amusing turns of phrase that I missed the first time around: when talking of her aunt and uncle's state of matrimony, Scout observes that Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry... It is full of one-liners that got forgotten - the writing itself was not remembered, just the story. Yet the writing has filled me with as much glee and emotion as the story itself, which is the revelatory aspect. Reading it this time around has been much like reading Lolita for the first time, the revelling in the language and its depth of perception, detail and humour. That has been particularly important given its subject matter.

Further, it really has brought home the rural nature of Maycomb County and the sheer, hellish poverty in which people lived. Perhaps having read Invisible Man in the intervening years has brought me a greater appreciation of the desperate circumstances in which people lived, and how poor white people clung onto segregation for the basic reason that they needed someone beneath them, to look down upon, just as the "respectable" folks did to them. Scout's portrait of Mayella Ewell's utterly lonely, miserable and hopeless life is heartbreaking. It is done with the perception of a child, but the wisdom and hindsight of an adult. It is horrific, and yet Atticus' closing argument brooks no sympathy for that fact as, quite frankly, she should have known better. Not for her sake, but for Tom's. Because Tom did not enjoy the luxury or privilege that she did: whiteness.

Of course, I am reading this within a course on perceptions and portrayals of the law by the artist. I'll report back on our class discussion and what Thane has to say next time around. But the pleasure of re-reading has been really rather striking, yet it seems that it is an entirely different, new book, so much more am I getting from it.