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As Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird turns 61, a look at why the novel still attracts criticism over its take on racism
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  • As Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird turns 61, a look at why the novel still attracts criticism over its take on racism

As Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird turns 61, a look at why the novel still attracts criticism over its take on racism

FP Staff • July 8, 2021, 15:37:19 IST
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For long, Lee’s story has been criticised for its ‘white saviour’ narrative, a debate that recently resurfaced following the decision of an English school teacher in Edinburgh to cancel the novel from his curriculum for being allegedly ‘problematic.’

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As Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird turns 61, a look at why the novel still attracts criticism over its take on racism

In 1960, American novelist Harper Lee published her debut book, To Kill A Mockingbird, which narrated the story of Atticus Finch, a white lawyer in Alabama who defends a black man accused of raping a young white woman named Mayella Ewell. Told through the eyes of Finch’s 10-year-old daughter, Scout, the 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has long since been touted as an American classic that poignantly depicts the racism and discrimination that was prevalent in America’s deep south. Yet, even as the critically acclaimed book turns 61 this weekend, the place it occupies in the canon of American literature is far from secure and it continues to be a topic of contention amongst the literati. For long, Lee’s story has been criticised for its ‘white saviour’ narrative, a debate that recently resurfaced following the decision of an English school teacher in Edinburgh to cancel the novel from his curriculum for being allegedly ‘problematic.’ To Kill A Mockingbird was accompanied by another classic, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, in James Gillespie’s High School as two works of literature deemed unsuitable for the school syllabus. The protagonist of Lee’s book is a white American male, not a person of colour, cited the professor, making its representations of racism ‘dated and problematical.’ So too, the use of the ‘N-word’ and the trope of a white lawyer defending a Black man from the throes of discrimination were motifs that could potentially inspire problematic ideas in the minds of impressionable children, the argument stated. In the novel, Finch is appointed as the defence lawyer for the Black man, Tom Robinson, and we are told the story of this trial through the gaze of Scout, a child trying to make sense of her father’s decision to defend a “nigger”. The prose also sheds light on the trauma that Scout and her brother Jem, face in school for Atticus’ choices that brand him as a “nigger-lover”. [caption id=“attachment_9788871” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] ![Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird has come under attack multiple times for using the N-word and for depicting the white saviour trope. Image via Wikimedia Commons](https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Mockingbird_640.jpg) Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has come under attack multiple times for using the N-word and for depicting the white saviour trope. Image via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] However, the white lawyer inevitably ends up emerging as the hero of Scout’s narrative and becomes the protagonist of a story that effectively sidelines the Black man, who is in fact wrongly trapped on account of another white man’s misconduct. Instead of Robinson’s predicaments, the constant threat to his life and the apparent injustice of the trial, what comes through poignantly in the book is Finch’s defence of the innocent Black man that renders him a saviour against the discriminatory patterns in the south. On the contrary, Finch, a character based on Lee’s father Amasa Coleman Lee has often been brought down from this pedestal for maintaining his silence on the real identity of Ewell’s rapist, for routinely participating in the segregation prevalent in his town and for taking on Robinson’s case only after being appointed his lawyer by the court. Moreover, the debate around the novel has also called out the book for being too insensitive, written as it is by the ‘privileged’ daughter of a ‘respectable’ lawyer in the Old South and questions have arisen about why it should take up space in the school curriculum when, in fact, students could instead be exposed to other literary voices on race and injustice that have emerged over the decades. According to a report in  The New Yorker, novelist Alice Randall argued that  Lee’s story in that context can be equally distressing for a Black boy in Mississippi who experiences first-hand the realities of racism and worries if one day he too would be falsely accused and put on trial like Robinson. This criticism that has grown from the racism debate, perceived also in the context of the current instances of police brutality and misconduct have put To Kill A Mockingbird on the 2020 list of most challenged books of the last decade. It took the 15th spot in this list along with works like Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye which were ranked 33rd and 10th respectively. Despite being a startling commentary delivered from the innocent but hardly childlike gaze of a young girl growing up without a mother and in the company of a father trying to imbibe anti-discriminatory ideals in his kids, Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird does fall prey to the contemporary cancel-culture that closes off a dialogue on the ‘white saviour’ trope in the story even before uninitiated school children can be introduced to this phenomenon in the study of racism and its history.

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Racism Harper Lee Alabama Pulitzer Prize Edinburgh racial discrimination To Kill A Mockingbird FWeekend cancel culture Old South To Kill A Mockingbird turns 61 white saviour trope Of Mice and Men
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