For years, I’ve cited To Kill a Mockingbird as my favorite book whenever asked. But I’ve read a lot of books since I first read that book in ninth grade English class. So thanks to a book club I’m a part of, I re-read it in January of this year. I wondered whether it would live up to its “favorite book” status. It did-and then some. I loved the book so much more now that I’m a parent and appreciated it in ways that I couldn’t have appreciated as a 14-year-old kid. I loved the sibling dynamics between Scout and Jem. I was moved by all the social critique and commentary that is still relevant, this many years later. But I was particularly touched by the parent/child dynamic between Atticus and Scout and Jem.
Atticus seems like an example of fatherhood (or maybe just “parenthood”) done right. He is exemplary in so many ways that it seems almost sacrilegious of me to try to detail them in a blog post.
Having said that, Atticus doesn’t exhibit any stereotypically male attributes or behaviors. He doesn’t hang out at the local diner or pool hall with drinking buddies. He’s not “tough,” although he does shock Scout and Jem when he goes out and shoots the rabid dog. He wears a seersucker suit, for crying out loud. He’s more of a quiet type and leads by example rather than bravado.
So why does Atticus Finch seem like the ideal father? To Kill a Mockingbird was written by a woman, so maybe Atticus Finch is an idealized version of what women want their fathers/husbands to be like? Because Atticus is single, we don’t get a glimpse of what he’s like as a husband. We don’t get to see him interact with his wife. He doesn’t have to negotiate parenting duties with a spouse. He’s something of a parental free agent. Lastly, he has Calpurnia to take care of all the mundane aspects of parenting (cleaning, laundry, etc.).
All that’s a discussion for another day. Tonight, I’m riding on a wave of Atticus-Finch-love. So here goes nothing-Parenting 101 from Atticus Finch.
Talk to your kids as if they’re real people. Don’t dumb down your language or sugarcoat things. Tell it like it is.
Atticus: “When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.”
Try to create meaningful, authentic opportunities for your kids to learn real life lessons.
Atticus arranges for Jem and Scout to read aloud to Mrs. Dubose–an elderly neighbor who had been crotchety and mean to Scout and Jem and had even called Atticus nasty names. They had no reason to like her. What they didn’t know was that Mrs. Dubose was addicted to morphine and was going through withdrawals because she wanted to die free of her addiction. Atticus explains to his kids why he had wanted them to have that experience:
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
Teach your kids to develop empathy for others.
Here’s how Atticus explains it: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Teach your kids–in word and especially in deed–not to give up.
Try to imagine what Atticus was up against, defending Tom Jones in a trial he knew he was going to lose. Atticus tells his kids, “Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
What kind of a message did that send to Scout and Jem? What must it have felt like to spend so much time and resources and energy in a losing battle? I’m not much of a risk-taker, so my kids aren’t seeing very many examples of me going up against terrible odds and sticking my neck on the line-especially not when it’s plain that I will not succeed. Is this a dereliction of parental duty on my part?
Lastly, accept that you can’t shield your kids from the world.
Atticus allows them to find their own way (although he does occasionally try to constrain them, but just a bit). Atticus tells Jem, “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.”
As the parent of a teenager, a tween, and one happily still-a-kid, this one struck me perhaps the most during this reading. My kids are reaching the stage where the problems they face are not things I can fix. This is hard for me as a parent. When they’re little, their problems have been pretty easy to fix: feed them, do puzzles with them, watch them do endless swimming pool tricks and compliment them on every single one, tuck them in at night, put a band-aid on an owie, you get the picture.
But I’m starting to get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a parent of kids who are old enough to have problems that you can’t fix. And what it might be like to stand on the sidelines and watch them make mistakes and face problems that maybe don’t even have a fix. Or worse yet, maybe as a parent, you are the problem.
Too bad I can’t talk to Atticus. I could sure use some advice on that one.
Enough about me and my parenting woes. Do you think Atticus is an ideal father? What other fictitious fathers (or father figures) do you admire?
Heather, this makes me want to read the novel and watch the movie again, always the sign of a great post.
Gary Cooper in “High Noon” reminds me of Atticus Finch, although he’s not a father, but still the strong, silent type who’s not a womanizer. In fact, Cooper’s character even puts duty before honeymoon in this equally fantastic movie. I’m also reminded of TV’s Chuck Connors in “The Rifleman,” a single father of the same mold, unafraid to choose what is right, let the consequence follow. Regretfully, these kind of men were soon deemed too tame and boring by the social revolution of the 60s and 70s and were largely overtaken by characters played by the likes of Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood (both of whom I love, of course) who had death for dinner and sex for desert.
Thinking about it more, To Kill a Mockingbird now strikes me as a Flannery O’Connor novel painted by Norman Rockwell.
I like this, Ed. It seems a real shame to me that the Gregory Peck type was replaced by less ‘father’-ing figures. It would be interesting to follow how this tradition has survived from the 1950s/early 1960s to date. I think it has, albeit too rarely, and too often with the wrong kind of politics for my liking.
Without these models, I think progressive fathers are without a powerful resource that can and should be supplied.
I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird several times, but not since I became a parent. This is inspiring me to read again. As a total aside, I have always loved Gregory Peck in his quiet dignified mode as in TKAM and Big Country.
Brilliant. I’m so afraid of failure that I’ve spent almost my whole life avoiding things I don’t feel I can do well. Needless to say, it has been very limiting. In trying to overcome my own fears, I hope I can set an example of trying and failing, where trying is the thing that really matters.
This is a message–especially the first and last point–that LDS parents desperately need. They seem to live in a fantasy that they can shield their children from everything, and therefore don’t have to talk to their kids honestly about life.
It just doesn’t work! The best parents are those that prepare their children to face life, not shield them from it.
@D. Michael Martindale, I’d take it one step further even, maybe, and say that it might do us some good to teach our kids to intentionally get out INTO the world. Check it out. Experience it. Embrace it. There’s so much good out in “the world.” I fear we’re missing out on a lot . . .
I absolutely agree with this. I love so many of the points you mentioned: to not speak down to kids, and to make opportunities for them to learn for themselves.
I aspire to be this kind of parent, and this makes me want to read the novel again, too (I was a teenager when I read it first).
Thanks for this insightful analysis.
I can certainly go along with that.
I’ve taught “To Kill a Mockingbird” almost every year of my 13 years as a teacher, and the one thing I always say to my students is, “When I grow up, I want to be like Atticus.”
When I read it as an English teaching major in college, I was dumb-founded. “This is the book that I read in 9th grade?!” I kept asking myself. I didn’t have teachers that helped me with reading complex and nuanced material until I reached Advanced Placement classes, so I’m afraid that the beauty and compassion and eloquence of the book was lost on me when I first encountered it as a 14-year old.
Atticus is actually modeled after Harper Lee’s own father, Amassa Lee, who was also a lawyer. The Tom Robinson case was inspired by a court case that Harper Lee watched unfold in the news as a young girl: The Scottsboro Boys — which, interestingly enough — is now a musical on Broadway and was featured on the Tony Awards last week. Dill is based on Harper Lee’s childhood friend, writer Truman Capote. Not sure why I’m sharing these things, other than Heather’s musings on a female author’s ideal father, accept perhaps, to point out that maybe the reason the book reaches us so deeply is because it isn’t entirely a fictitious ideal: it’s inspired by memories of actual people and events, which is both inspiring when we consider the possibility of a calm and contemplative parent, but also frightening when we consider the white communities’ behavior in the Tom Robinson case and the Scottsboro Boys’ case.
A few years ago I was an Enrichment leader at church and we read TKM for a book group activity. The young bishop’s wife came in a bit late because, as she reported, she’d been in the car reading, as she just HAD to finish the book. Her favorite part of the book? “It’s not time to worry yet,” because she’d started saying it to her four kids. I’ve started saying it to my students and myself.
My favorite part? That literature can mold and shape people, and that every time I read this book, I learn something better from it than the last time.
@Krisha, I hope you come back! I’d love to hear more of your thoughts.
After reading it this time around, I also read the biography of Harper Lee (I think it’s called *Mockingbird*). That was fascinating on so many levels. I’m interested in Truman Capote now as well.
So it’s Atticus that says “It’s not time to worry yet”?? I don’t remember that. When does he say that? I love it.
Hope you don’t mind my approaching this from a different angle. I played Mrs DeBose when Hale Centre Theatre/SLC did To Kill a Mockingbird a few years ago. When I read my part and realized that I had to scream obscenities and racial insults at some of the black members of the cast, I cried. Many of these same people were good friends of mine which made it even more difficult. Knowing how important my lines were to the deeper meaning of the play I screwed up my courage and became Mrs. DeBose. I played the part single cast, sometimes three times a day for two full months. When we took our bows something very sweet started happening. The preacher who got the lion’s share of my abuse, starting walking over to put his arm around me. Every time he did it I was moved. Trying to stay in character, I silently cried and tried not to show my tears. I will never forget his kindness. I knew he realized how difficult this part was for me to play and he wanted me to know that he understood and that he loved me and forgave me for the hurtful words that I was forced to utter.
Nan’s in the house!! (Guys, Nan is John D.’s mom.) )
What a wonderful story. My husband is reading the book to our younger two (ages 8 and 11) and he is really struggling with saying the n-word. He doesn’t want to bleep it out because it’s real and it’s part of the story and because pretending like it didn’t happen won’t make it go away, right? But he’s still having a hard time with it. As well he should. It’s a powerful word.
We’ve had some good talks about “bad words.” The kids were wanting to know HOW BAD it was. He ended up telling them it was pretty much the worst thing they could say–as bad or worse than the f-word. And Stuart said, “Wow. So pretty much we should never say it.” Yep.
Nan, I have tremendous respect for your willingness to be true to the story. Same with your husband, Heather. I compare that to people who want to ban Huckleberry Finn because of that word, or to sanitize it in new editions. These are people who don’t understand the big picture, who obsess over the details and can’t see the overall message.
I consider these acts of integrity.
What a great discussion you have going, Heather! The power to be shaped by characters and stories is what drew me to being an English teacher as well. I love the idea of reading this book to my kids at home.