2013.11.28 note: To Kill A Mockingbird (week12)

Note

1. genres of novels:

•  bildungsroman(溫馨勵志小說)
•  detective fiction
•  fatasy/adventure

2. To kill a mockingbird(1926)
 author: Harper Lee
*1961-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning novel
*dealing with the issue of racism
*winning Presedent Medal Prise
*"Mockingbird" is a metaphor.
*as a Southern Gothic novel and a Bildungsroman
* addressing issues of class, courage, compassion, and gender roles in the American Deep South
*The narrative is very tough, because [Lee] has to both be a kid on the street and aware of the mad dogs and the spooky houses, and have this beautiful vision of how justice works and all the creaking mechanisms of the courthouse. Part of the beauty is that she... trusts the visual to lead her, and the sensory.

—Allan Gurganus

Quotations:

*"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summers day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
→the narrator provides the setting for the story and sets the mood for a quiet and somewhat dull town, which sets the stage for the conflict of Tom's trial.
(There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go.)

* "Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself."
→“We have nothing to fear but fear itself” is the most famous line from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech, made after the 1932 presidential election. From this clue, it is reasonable to infer that the action of the story opens in the summer of 1933, an assumption that subsequent historical clues support. The defeat of the National Recovery Act in the Supreme Court in 1935, for instance, is mentioned in Chapter 27 of the novel, when Scout is eight—about two years older than at the start of the novel.
→It is trying to convey the optomism and hope that those words caused to people of a hard-hit rural town during bad times.
(別自己嚇自己)

*"Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now."
I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime."
→Scout's first grade teacher makes her feel bad about being able to read, when she should feel proud that she can read and write at such a young age. Scout even apologizes and referred to her ability as a crime. This exchange demonstrates how many people in Maycomb are very small minded in their views.

*"Your father's right,' she said. 'Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

 →In addition to bearing the title of the novel, this passage demonstrates yet again how similar Atticus and Mrs. Maudie are. Both agree quite strongly that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, an animal symbolic of Boo Radley and Tom Robinson, as neither has caused harm, and prove only to have pure hearts.

 

Links:
*cross-examination
*The Children Save Atticus
*Boo is a Hero
*What Kind of Man Are You
*All Men Are Created Equal

Major Lessons:

1) Put yourself in other people's shoes.
2)Don't kill mockingbirds (don't kill innocent people)
3)Keep fighting even if you know you'll lose.
4)The world is very unfair.


 

Word

1. Tom Boy:穿著打扮像男孩的女孩
2. rustling:沙沙作響