Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (42 page)

Harper Lee makes no attempt to get involved in such issues, and it probably would not be very helpful if she did. Instead she offers a meta-narrative in which she uses the eyes of three children to help us to see a very similar situation in a slightly different context; she relies on the sensitive reader to spot the connections and reflect on them. In this way, while alerting us to the potential damage in all forms of otherness and particularly to the dangers associated with corporate otherness, she concludes her novel with a faint hint that once we can view all others with a more perceptive eye, we may begin to see that, at least in some cases, it is through embracing the other that we find our own deliverance; hence, we move on to Boo Radley.

The Tale of Boo Radley

The tale of Boo Radley addresses the brand of otherness for which there is virtually no evidence but which can readily root and blossom if there is a seed or a doubt, a bit of mystery or imagination, and somebody on hand to exploit it.

Boo Radley is the
nonexistent other
.
There is indeed a person with that name and you can “find him” in Maycomb, but of the real Boo Radley and his family, Harper Lee tells us little or nothing. We never meet him until the end, and when we do he is totally different from what we have been led to expect. Yet in Boo's story, we can observe the story of so many others, individual and corporate, in all parts of the world.

The reactions of three children to the nonexistent other are not unlike those of society in general, possibly a reflection of the attitude of many in Maycomb to those of a different race, color, or way of life, and (some would say) a reflection of ourselves in similar situations. It starts (as noted before) when three children, an overdose of imagination, and a modicum of maturity are let loose on something strange or unusual (
mysterium
), of no great consequence and quite beyond their experience and understanding. Not surprisingly, they cannot let it lie (
fascinans
), at least not without trying to examine it and discover its reality for themselves.

Initially, Jem and Scout are hardly aware of Boo. He was “just there.” He always had been. Sometimes they wondered if he was real, but mostly they saw him as part of the furniture, treated him with respect, and kept their distance. All they knew depended on stories, myths, and the innuendoes that surrounded him, or what they had gleaned from comments and gossip, and most of it merely washed over them and they paid no attention to it. Boo barely encroaches on their lives, and when he does, there are always others around to offer assurance, security, and protection. There is, however, just enough “strangeness” to breed suspicion.
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This is how the nonexistent other first claims our attention.
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Individuals, families, tribes, races, dogmas, ideologies, and the like can live for years if not generations surrounded by all kinds of others that they know are there but that scarcely impinge on their consciousness. Then one day something happens.

In this case, the catalyst was the arrival of Dill, a year younger than Scout, a “visitor” from another world.
25
When boredom sets in at the end of a long summer vacation, Dill sells Jem and Scout the idea of taking on Boo Radley. From that moment, Scout and Jem's world turns on its axis as Boo Radley becomes a phantom, symbol, or icon of the other and suddenly possesses a power over the children, which they find hard to ignore. What they do may ring familiar bells for anyone who has lived through a similar situation.

First comes a dare. Three children play “chicken” with the “other,” testing and teasing themselves as to who has the courage to go and touch the Radleys' house or knock at the door (
TKAM
15–16).

Next, fantasy feeds on “mysterious messages,” as stories,
26
handed down from year to year, are combined with presents found in a tree adjoining the Radley home, suggesting that Boo may be playing games with them (
TKAM
37–38, 69–70).

Then, play-acting occurs as they dramatize the other; their sense of fear and anxiety find expression in humor as they make fun of the whole idea (
TKAM
43–45), followed by careful planning to get Boo to come out of his hiding place (
TKAM
52).

At each stage, boldness and the lack of response feed suspicion, matched by increasing confidence and risk taking, until even the adults join in after a shot is fired in the Radley garden one night, and the story goes round that Boo's older brother had shot a Negro. These occurrences and the rumors they generate thereby confirm precisely the sort of thing that everybody wants to believe.

Hard facts may still be difficult to come by, but slowly there is an increasing awareness and a growing suspicion of this nonexistent other, possibly enough to cause alarm (in a childlike way), as the children dream about him to the point where he looms larger and larger on their radar. Like Wordsworth's peak, fear (
mysterium
) is balanced by a fatal, almost irresistible attraction (
fascinans
).

Adult attitudes vary. Nobody seems to doubt that Boo Radley is real. Some actually claim to know the real story.
27
Some claim to have seen him (
TKAM
48). Some adopt a healthy indifference. Some just don't see it as a problem. Some go into denial. Some wage a war against it. Only a few, Scout and Jem especially, want an explanation.

Miss Maudie's view is simply that Boo Radley stays in the house because he doesn't want to come out (
TKAM
49). She knew him as a boy and testifies he was fine as a youngster. Everything people say about him is “three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford,”
28
and Miss Maudie has no time for such rumors. She reasons that nobody knows what some people have to endure, and nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors (
TKAM
51).

Similarly Atticus, wise and detached as ever, puts the whole incident in proportion, tells them to “stop tormenting that man,” to stop their games, and to keep well away from the house until they are invited (
TKAM
54–55).

Without any hard evidence, it is a story that runs only on fear and suspicion, and serves only those who want to relieve their boredom or those who find it stimulating to have an enemy. So it is that something “nonexistent” can assume reality.

Conclusion

As the story closes, the details of narrative and meta-narrative become secondary. By the middle of October little in Maycomb has changed,
29
and by the end of the month, life for Scout and Jem has resumed the familiar routine of school, play, and study. (
TKAM
277, 287). For the reader, however, the story may only just be beginning. The tale of Boo Radley may come to an end but not without a hint of a positive note.

Boo, it appears, was a much misunderstood character, a caring person who goes about his business unobtrusively, making advances and offering openings but leaving others to respond. He it was who made overtures to the children with gifts,
30
but they had no understanding of what was going on, found it impossible to believe it was Boo, and (blinded by neighborhood legend and folklore) found themselves unable to share their anxieties with the adults around them.

Yet, when Jem lost his breeches, making a hasty exit from Radley territory, it was Boo who repaired them and left them in an orderly fashion for Jem to collect at his own convenience (
TKAM
66). On that cold night when Miss Maudie's house was burned to the ground, Boo provided a blanket for Scout (
TKAM
81), and he was the one on hand when she needed someone to protect her after the Halloween party (
TKAM
309–310). At no point, however, had the children seen him, not even on the night of the fire (
TKAM
80–82). As Jem points out, all Scout had to do was to turn round, but she was too busy looking at the fire to notice (
TKAM
82). After the Halloween party, standing there in Boo's presence with Atticus and Mr. Tate, Scout finds there is still something of the mysterious about him that makes it difficult for her to acknowledge him.

Asked by the sheriff what happened, she says, “Mr. Ewell was tryin' to squeeze me to death, I reckon . . . then somebody yanked Mr. Ewell down. . . . Somebody was staggerin' around and pantin' and—coughing fit to die.” Asked who she thought it was, with Boo standing straight in front of her, she still cannot say his name. About all she can do is to point and say, “Why there he is, Mr. Tate, he can tell you his name” (
TKAM
309). Her description that follows is poignant as she finally acknowledges Boo's presence:

He had been leaning against the wall when I came into the room, his arms folded across his chest. As I pointed he brought his arms down and pressed the palms of his hands against the wall. They were white hands, sickly white hands that had never seen the sun. . . .

I looked from his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants . . . up his thin frame to his torn shirt. His face was white as his hands. . . . His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his grey eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin. . . .

When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly . . . and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange small spasm shook him . . . but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbour's image blurred with my sudden tears.

“Hey, Boo,” I said. (
TKAM
310)

Readers familiar with the Bible
31
(or Handel's
Messiah
32
) may be reminded of other parallels to Lee's portrait of Radley. In addition, readers familiar with religious art may recall associations with portraiture. This is not to suggest that Boo is Jesus or even a Christ figure, but simply to note that occasionally, and not least among the rejected, despised, and dispossessed others, one comes across a character who so closely resembles the one at the heart of the Christian tradition, and when it happens, nobody is more surprised than we are, except perhaps the person themselves. Atticus is the only one who knows the story of life is never all failure and that there is much more to it than what regularly passes for success.

Closing

We began with Otto's
mysterium tremendum et fascinans
and noted how scholars of the history of religion have sometimes regarded this as humanity's searching after God, a response to a limited understanding of life with a mixture of fear, suspicion, and fascination. If there is any connection between Otto and Harper Lee, it is not so much in the characters as in the quest. Biblical images of early encounters with God are scarcely concealed below the surface, beginning with God telling Moses, “You will see my back, but not my face”;
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continuing in Isaiah's description of the suffering servant;
34
coming to a climax with the women weeping at the cross;
35
and finding the ultimate expression in the stone that the builders rejected.
36

Perhaps Harper Lee is telling us more than she realized as she offers us a text that acts as a tool for dealing with our fears and uncertainties and gives us a fresh way of looking at them. If so, one way to get the most out of
To Kill a Mockingbird
is to identify the principal characters (Boo, Atticus, Tom, Mayella, or the like) in our own experience, and instead of “playing games” with them or fantasizing about them, learning to see what we are doing to the other, to hear what the others are trying to tell us, and to spot what it is that we are missing.

Notes

1. William Wordsworth was an English romantic poet (1770–1850) and poet laureate (1843–1850). “The Prelude,” his magnum opus, is a semi-autobiographical work, one section of which deals with Childhood and School-time. Born in Cockermouth, he grew up with an intense love and appreciation of nature, especially in the Lake District where he lived most of his life.

2. Rudolph Otto (1869–1937) was a German Lutheran theologian and a specialist in comparative religion.

3. Unlike Nathan Radley, for example, Miss Maudie is not “a foot-washing Baptist . . .
footwashers believe anything that's pleasure is a sin,” and though they may use the same Bible, she says sometimes “the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than the whiskey bottle” in the hand of another” (
TKAM
50).

4. Her “nose quivered with curiosity” (
TKAM
245).

5. Her retort to Miss Stephanie's story about Boo Radley gazing through her window, for example, is hardly understanding and sympathetic (
TKAM
51).

6. An explanation he believes only children could understand (
TKAM
228).

7. He is drinking through two straws out of a brown paper bag, reputed to be concealing “a Coca-Cola bottle full of whiskey” when in fact it turns out to be nothing more than Coca-Cola (
TKAM
182–183, 227).

8. For a selection see classiclit.about.com/od/finchatticus/a/aa_atticusquote.htm.

9. For corroborative evidence, witness the way Atticus receives Walter Cunningham into his house (though an unexpected guest) and how within minutes “he and Atticus talked together like two men” (
TKAM
27).

10. At this point, there is a reflection in the meta-narrative as Atticus explains to Jem that his failure to understand is because he has not yet faced a situation in life that has interfered with his reasoning process, yet, in a sense Jem has, without being aware of it, in his treatment of Boo Radley, in that the selfsame “neighborhood legend” that had come between “twelve reasonable men . . . and reason” had enabled Jem and his friends to behave as they did. (
TKAM
251–252).