I've just been poking around some new blogs and I realized that many conservative bloggers list To Kill a Mockingbird as their Favorite Book on their Viewer Profile. If you haven't read this book, you won't be sorry. (Or see the film, the film is THAT good.)What's your favorite thing about this story, or the film...?
There's almost nothing about the film I don't find absolutely perfect. To say nothing about the story, of course.
59 comments:
Of all the many films based on novels, To Kill A Mockingbird is the most masterful.
After my students read the book, I always demand that they see the movie. Once they do, they read the book again.
There are so many excellent themes in the book. Of course, the primary one is the evils of prejudice. But look at the family theme! An American value, indeed.
Right, Always. By the way, the second closet "Film like the book" is NOBODY'S PERFECT, one of THE most wonderful books by Richard Russo. Seeing the movie showed me how movies from books should be made.
All of Russo's books knock me out, by the way. Fantastic.
I'm so glad you get your students to see and read this story.......it's so important.
If I had my way, I'd have every single Junior High and High School student be required to see:
Boyz In The Hood
Freedom Writers and
To Kill a Mockingbird
I think it is certainly true that if the book offers Atticus Finch as a moral hero . . . and as a model of integrity for lawyers, then it clearly must be a work of fiction. Let us recall that Congress is filled to overflowing with lawyers, and it cannot be even remotely described as a bastion of integrity. Yes, I’m sure there are lawyers in America with integrity; and I’m sure unicorns exist, too.
The background MUSIC by Elmer Bernstein in TKAM is nothing short of miraculous. Few consciously realize it, but the score MAKES the film.
And that takes nothing away from Gregory Peck's magnificent performance. But then ALL the performers were magnificent in that movie.
I saw TKAM when it first came out, and I can honestly say that nothing has ever moved me quite so deeply before or since. Ir was the first time I ever wept openly in public as conscious being --- a very rare experience for me in all my 68 years.
Certainly an immortal classic if ever there was one.
Thanks for bringing this up, Z.
~ FreeThinke
Hey, Mustang, great Art like TKAM is larger than factual reality and sheds light on ultimate truths about the nature of humanity. It's not about lawyers or politicians or even about Civil Rights. It's about the way ignorance, prejudice, superstition, and the ever-present desire of too many folks to avoid moral growth and be forever "in control" mars Existence and destroys our potential to live beautiful, godly, compassionate and fulfilling lives.
This is a profound piece that transcends politics and all the petty considerations that too often occupy our thoughts.
Genuine Art doesn't EXPLAIN it EVOKES, and this work is masterful beyond description in that regard.
Atticus Finch, despite his mild, unpretentious temperament stands for RECITUDE --- something we've all-but-forgotten in our hysterical pursuit of Power and Control.
He said, "For God's sake, gentlemen, DO YOU DUTY" --- but they DIDN'T because they couldn't give up their habitual mindset and serve the Truth. And so a terrible tragedy happened.
Even though the black victim of white prejudice and entrenched societal dishonesty lost his life, the INTEGRITY personified by Atticus Finch triumphed.
Harper Lee gave us a great role model. Whether he was real or a work of fiction doesn't matter in the least. He represented CONSCIENCE, DECENCY, INTEGRITY and true RIGHTEOUSNESS with rare eloquence.
~ FreeThinke
One of my all time favorites! Gregory Peck was excellent in the film and the book was excellent too! So many elements it could take all day to pull them all out and discuss.
I love reading. *and writing :D
TKAM is my second favorite movie of all time (the first is Disney's "Alice In Wonderland").
This is the movie that solidified my position that racism is one of mankind's greatest evils.
I loved "To Kill a Mockingbird", both the book and the movie, although I liked the book the best. I don't know why I didn't list it on my profile as one of my favorites because it definitely is. I guess I just didn't think of it at the time. But both the book and the movie are masterpieces.
My VERY VERY favorite scene/line in the whole film is when the children are standing up in the balcony area with the town's Black folks, everyone peering down at the goings-on.........
As their father Atticus walks through the courtroom to leave, the old man says something very close to "Stand up children, that's your FATHER going by"
The respect he demanded of the children of their own father, the respect he commanded of a White man who'd done so much....my sadness that this old man had to feel SUCH uniqueness, such a thrill that a White man had done so much for his community...It's a kind of happiness and bittersweetness all rolled into one, you know?
That one line says SO SO much.
I have it on DVD and it is still a saturday afternoon favorite dig of mine.
This is my husband's favorite movie. He also loves to listen to the audio book.
I could not pick a favorite scene from the movie - the whole thing is perfect.
The movie was good, but as a child I found the book tedious.
I am now reading Atlas Shrugged at work and it is a mixture of brilliance and stupidity. Her dialogue is great but her narrative is terrible.
I loved ,To Kill A Mockingbird.
First noticed it when I was 8 years old and living in the panhandle of FLorida in 1965.
My parents had a copy, and I asked my mom a bit about it.
Later, in the ninth grade, our class read it, and of course, I saw it many times on television.
Lots of outstanding things about this movie, and love the way Atticus stands for moral responsibility and honor and integrity.
Oh, if we had that on Capitol Hill, we would be so much better off.
If we had more of that , period, the world would be different.
WVDOTTR
Oh my, I did not read the book or see the movie. I must be missing something. But I am more into books like Pilgrims Progress or John Gunther's Death Be Not Proud or perhaps Loosing Bin Laden. I am sorry Z I am useless in this conversation, but I am willing to get the book from the library and read it.
I have read the book a couple of times. It's a relatively simple tale of human nature, told by the young girl Scout, and it resonates with everyone. It's beautifully written by Harper Lee. She earned that Pulitzer.
A SERIOUS QUESTION:
What would you say to someone who viewed as nothing but typical, utterly predictable liberal propaganda?
I've heard that view expressed, and realize it COULD be interpreted in that light.
What do YOU think about that issue?
Does knowing that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were childhood friends affect your view of Mockingbird in any way? If so how and why?
~ FreeThinke
It's been so long since I read the book... I do remember that the book creates a very vivid mental picture of the setting.
FT...Why would knowing Harper Lee and Truman Capote were childhood friends influence feelings about the book? I think it's an interesting aside, nothing more, nothing less.
Since Capote's homosexuality is the first thing I would guess you're referring to, it reminded me that a very sad 'part' of this enormous film experience is that the little boy who Scout and her brother played with died of AIDS several years ago. When you get to love characters in a film, their 'real' life situations can affect us, at least they do me. And that saddened me for him.
As for this film being LIBERAL propaganda? THAT is insane, but I think it's important and good that you bring this up because there are those who would consider it that way.
No, as you know, Republicans were the ones who finally got the Civil Rights Bill signed, having fought for it, though we all know there are nasty Republicans who, in those days, didn't understand or agree with human rights for ALL MEN..and Democrats, too, of course, like Robt Byrd, who was a recruiter for the Klan.
So, this is not propaganda for anything but WAKING UP!, in my humble opinion.
This is a story about HUMAN RIGHTS and how ANYONE with a heart and brain and soul knew what happened to that Black man was WRONG and he had to be defended with as much courage and zeal and brain power as ANY MAN should.
I believe one essential part of this film is that the Black man was treated like A MAN (by Peck) but you felt he himself was fearful and ashamed about how that would be perceived, as MANLY and DIGNIFIED and deserving as he was. It's almost like the accused Black man was ashamed of the WHITE MAN's inability to understand every citizen deserved respect and, on the more practical aspect of the story, a TRIAL.
I was very touched (and a little 'ashamed' myself) by the depiction of the Black family seemingly SHOCKED that somebody would actually DEFEND one of THEIR OWN. I think that might have awakened lots of people..."Why are they surprised?" I don't believe Whites outside the South exactly understood what went on there. "What doesn't effect ME in BROOKLY or LOS ANGELES or SEATTLE doesn't exist" kind of mentality, something we are ALL guilty of, I think.
This woke people up. The White guy was the BAD GUY, reprehensible, lying, playing to the racist bigots... Hoorah.
I think the Black actor, Brock Peters (Tom Robinson) was exquisite..And the fact that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar might be that his part, while pivotal, wasn't a large part, but his DIGNITY, his HIDEOUS FEAR that you could TOUCH, his PRIDE as a MAN...blew my mind and deserved recognition, in my opinion. Remember, back then, Tom Robinson could not have said "I am a MAN, I have dignity, I did NOT do this, FREE ME" But Brock Peters told us all (reminded us all) that without words.
An interesting thing to know is that he read the eulogy at Gregory Peck's funeral.
In the 'film life', in that small Southern town, one would wish that Tom could have read Atticus' eulogy after his death at the age of 90 or so!!, had things gone as they should have. I don't want to suggest more in case someone doesn't know the end of the film.
It's one of those books you inevitably read by high school.
I've met kids named "Scout".
Interesting question by FreeThinke...
....no time to answer. (^_^)
I have had that book for almost 35 years, and have not picked it up once to read it. I got it from my brother around 7/8 as a class reader.
Well, I might as well take a stab at it with my very unpopular opinion, which is the one FT brought up.
First let me say I don't have any reason to doubt that the book was written honestly. As I understand it a great deal of it was based on Harper Lee's own childhood and in fact herself as a child, and some of her own family experience. I didn't read the book but I do enjoy the parts of the movie that evoke the atmosphere of the small town, the way it looked, and the antics of the children.
Parts I don't enjoy of the movie just hit me as sterotypes, and although this attitude may have developed later in the context of subsequent leftist politics in this country, I just can't watch it now without having all these same reactions.
There's the stereotype of the noble black man who is the victim of the sex fantasies of the white trash girl who sets him up to be charged with rape. There is her cruel drunk of a redneck father. There are the lynch-happy rednecks of the town. And there is the supernoble ACLU-type lawyer played by Peck, who has the intellectual "progressive" non- or even anti-Christian name of "Atticus" and progressive enlightened attitudes toward his precocious children. Atticus represents to me a certain class of people I knew a lot of in the 60s, a self-admiring group of intellectual artsy "progressives" who all evolved into rabid liberals/leftists -- utterly disdainful of "white trash" Southerners, and in love with their own "enlightened" sense of justice.
I'm probably unfair to the book -- and the movie -- because of my own personal associations, but my objection isn't to the theme of the movie, the injustices towards blacks and the fight for justice, to the fact that it uses what have now become stereotypes to get it across. In those days there was probably no other way to write the book, but by now all those characters are just stereotypes to my mind, so that when I recently watched the movie on Netflix I had all the same reactions. Why couldn't the lawyer have been more of a local redneck boy grown up to acquire that sense of justice, out of his Christian background perhaps, with a name like Billy Bob instead of Atticus? Why couldn't the girl who accused the black man have had some complexity to her instead of nothing but white trash passion and fear? Why couldn't the black man have had a human attraction to her even, a little human conflict of his own? Why couldn't the father have shown a remorseful side?
Well, in 1960 I suppose that wasn't possible. So we have pure stereotypes on all sides.
Beautifully done stereotypes in a beautifully done setting.
But I know I'm "insane" and without heart or brain, as Z says.
Great book and even better movie. I think that the shortest book review ever was written by my 9th grade buddy Steve Franscak about "Catcher in the Rye". When filling in the "thoughts" column on his handout he wrote, This book really SUCKED! I agreed with him and laughed so hard that we got detention.
Morgan
Thanks for all your comments....it is a very important story and I'm glad most of you are familiar with it.
CJ, one could say that there are stereotypes in this film and the thinking might have been, as in many films limited to 2 hours, that they are there to make points quicker and more effectively.
Your accusation that I would call anyone at my site names is written at the end, seemingly out of context, and I'd encourage anyone who reads it to read my longest comment again to where that came from. I regret that you added it there as you did.
I will say that I continue to defend my point that the defense of any man should not be viewed as liberal propaganda. As if liberals are the only ones who would do this; a belief that truly IS liberal propaganda.
Morgan, that is hilarious! Thanks for that story....even these (many!!) years later, it made ME laugh!
Hey! Whatever happened to J.D. Salinger anyway? He just disappeared after Franny and Zooey.
I've read that he was by nature a recluse, but he was an important guy in his day. I wonder if he's even still alive?
Sorry, Morgan, but I enjoyed reading The Catcher in the Rye when it first came out. "The Graduate" was in many ways a knock-off of Catcher in my opinion. Catcher is more authentic --- a very original piece of work and honest, I think.
As to any controversy about the ultimate motives behind TKAM, I still hail it as an important work of Art, and love it's expressiveness and sensitivity, which was, as I said earlier, perfectly expressed in the the absolutely tremendous musical score by Elmer Bernstein (no relation to Leonard Bernstein by the way).
I have come to believe that when we look backward after decades of being torn apart by the Cultural Marxist Agenda, it's all too easy to see a "Communist Plot" in nearly everything that dared to question the accepted norms of the past.
Perhaps, but as I.H.S. said the other day on another thread when I blamed "liberal activism" for the lamentable condition of the Black Community, we forget all too easily that there were HUGE problems that really DID need to be addressed long before Cultural Marxists --- better known today as The Democratic Party --- got a stranglehold on the affairs of this nation.
The Marxists merely made nefarious USE of the many LEGITIMATE issues that lay before us.
These distinctions may be subtle, but I believe they are vitally important. If we don't continuously THINK THROUGH the REASONS for our beliefs, we are in danger of becoming mindless intellectual and spiritual robots.
~ FreeThinke
Thanks for your comment, FT..you said "nearly everything that dared to question the accepted norms of the past....could be be seen as hiding a "Communist plot"...
How the defense of an American in America does that is beyond me, but I'm eager to hear how. As you know, I've never been averse to civil discourse here... let us have it!
The score of this film is exquisite; I'd put it on my blog post and then apparently deleted (and forgot I had) in an attempt at brevity. You are SO right. And you are so right that the Bernsteins are not brothers.....
I was assigned to read it in 9th grade. I hate being told to read things.
Don't remember much about it but thinking Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" spoke to me more.
I'm sure you're right, FT, that I see Mockingbird as filtered through my subsequent experience with Political Correctness. It is hard to describe what I experienced in Berkeley in the 60s. My friends were all liberals and leftists and I thought of myself as an intellectual. I thought I had their views. But my own background was blue collar and not southern, although such a background would get lumped as white trash and redneck just in general conversation anyway. It was never a personal thing of course, but just hearing my own background described in such terms was hard to take. My father was a Democrat but a McCarthy supporter. I came to resent the very people I was learning to identify with, the self-righteous Atticuses of the day, no matter how righteous their cause, because they created their own evil stereotypes against people I loved and in favor of a cause I hadn't experienced.
Oh actually I had experienced it I remember. As a child I took piano lessons from a black lady, learned a lot from her, but she took offense at a Christmas card I sent her one year, a little brown mouse looking at itself in a Christmas tree ornament, and left it on display by the piano well into April as if to punish me. It became excruciatingly oppressive and depressing. I had sent the same little mouse cards to everyone I knew. The mice came in various colors from pink to gray to white to brown. Hers just happened to be brown, and it took ages before I even grasped why she was humiliating me that way.
My mother unfortunately didn't handle it very well either, when she found out about it from a friend who was also taking lessons from this woman. The piano teacher insisted it was racist and my mother said she was crazy and she wouldn't expose me to that kind of treatment any more and sent me to the other piano teacher in town. It was a relief but I would have been much better if the teacher could have seen that it was a big misunderstanding.
So when my family was implicitly accused in the 60s of racism by self-appointed self-righteous leftists, I was not very open to it and that's no doubt part of the background of my reaction to Mockingbird.
And since then we've had extreme versions of white-hatred from those same people.
What a story, CJ..
I couldn't for the life of me figure out what could have offended the piano teacher....."brown bird, Christmas...?" The reality is stunning. Very sad
Unfortunately, OFFENDISM (my term for it) has become a sort of RELIGION for any and every minority who's been encouraged to think of themselves as victims.
It's a substitute for genuine thought, and is calculated always to shut down debate and cut off rational discussion with cries of Bigotry! Racism! Anti-Semitism! Homophobia! or whatever.
All you have to do is claim to be "offended" and everybody around you is supposed to SHUT UP and SLINK AWAY with their proverbial tails between their legs and let YOU change the subject to suit YOUR feelings of the moment.
Offendism --- like it's Twin Brother, Political Correctness --- STINKS to high heaven.
But try to fight it, and you'll immediately be labeled a Nazi.
~ FreeThinke
PS: Thanks, CJ, for your detailed account. It explains a great deal.
FT, as you've been known to say EGG-zackly...to this: "But try to fight it, and you'll immediately be labeled a Nazi."
The world's got it beautifully set up that any resistance to any of these idiocies (PC, amnesty for law breakers, killing babies, global climate change, etc etc.) makes you a right-wing idiot.
We have to figure out how to change this...Education's the only thing that'll work, but I don't think we have the luxury of the time that'll take.
Thank you, Z. I think as a nation we've let ourselves be euchred into positions of extreme polarity.
As I said earlier --- and many times before --- we really DID and still DO have social, fiscal, moral, and ethical problems --- there is always a need to find ways to improve ourselves.
As you know, we were never perfect even at our best. HOWEVER, when a small-but-highly-vocal, AGGRESSIVE, BELLIGERENT and PERSISTENT dissident faction, hungry for Power and Vengeance, ABUSES the First Amendment and the Judicial System in order to tear society apart with a largely hypocritical agenda, we can't help but become paralyzed with confusion and self-doubt.
This leads ultimately to the kind of anger and frustration that so divides us today
We see it all around us. In the 19th-century Matthew Arnold referred to the world as "a darkling plain where ignorant armies clash by night."
Imagine what he'd think, if her were alive TODAY!
Ignorance is our worst enemy --- next to the desire to exert power and control over those we regard as wrong, inferior or otherwise undesirable.
The problem has been around since Eve persuaded Adam to taste the apple and Cain slew Abel. I doubt if we'll ever see an end to it.
Maybe we're not SUPPOSED to?
~ FreeThinke
Well, I think my piano teacher just really was hurt and absolutely certain the hurt was intended. I suppose a cartoon mouse is already less than a dignified image for Christmas, and for it to be brown was just too much. She just couldn't imagine at all that there was nothing offensive intended in that card, and it was really tragic that she never realized that.
I don't know if my mother could have brought her to recognize that had she not been rather a hothead herself. She told me she did explain that I'd sent such cards out to everyone. Others also received the brown mouse. But I suppose in my teacher's mind that was just an excuse to cover the offense which in her case was most certainly intended.
In any case this wasn't an offense being milked for its PC effects, the poor woman just couldn't see it any other way.
Life is dangerous.
Conservative Christians were fighting to abolish slavery long before Democrat terrorists decided to fire upon US military installations.
Martin Luther King was a Republican. The FBI illegally wiretapping him and attempting to blackmail him into silence before assasinating him was all under the control of St. Kennedy and St. Johnson.
The Civil Rights Acts of 1871, 1964, and 1968 were all authored by Republicans.
The tally of positive things leftists and Democrats have done for ANYBODY's civil rights could fit in a thimble and still leave room for an air show.
Call 'em on it. Every time.
FT,
God lacked the sense of humor to see that the best sacrifice from Cain's flock was his little brother.
CJ, I'm sorry to have to speak plainly, but your piano teacher was an ASS. I don't blame your mother in the least for reacting negatively to her paranoid bullsh-t.
I'll bet she wasn't a very good teacher anyway. If she had been, you'd still be playing today, right? ;-)
Your old sparring partner and longtime friend,
FT
You know, FT....seems to me like that woman must have had such hurts that it took little to tip her over into being paranoid at the slightest whiff of an offense (which, in this case, was CERTAINLY not the case!)..That's what's sad, isn't it?
Well, Z, some people just make a CAREER out of nursing their grievances. Life hurts EVERYBODY sooner or later. You don't have to be a card-carrying member of a minority group to suffer heartbreak, misunderstanding, abuse and injustice. You just have to human.
It is the way we choose to BEAR all the stuff that life hands out that defines our character, and determines whether we are productive reasonably content.
I truly believe that if you look for trouble, you'll find it. If you expect to feel grief and pain, you won't be disappointed.
In essence life is all about being a GOOD SPORT about these things.
Take it from one who knows.
~ FT
And HEY! Martin Luther King's party affiliation is by no means an established fact.
If he was a Republican, he was a Republican like I'm a Tyrannosaurus Rex. );-s
A few citations from good old Google:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801754.html
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080623073933AAaHhU9
http://www.nndb.com/people/085/000028998/
http://crooksandliars.com/2008/07/06/martin-luther-king-jr-was-a-republican
And many many others.
There are always self-serving myth-makers at work in every corner of politics.
Skepticism about every assertion is healthy and necessary for the preservation of the little bit of sanity we may have left.
~ FreeThinke
"To suggest that Martin could identify with a party that affirms preemptive, predatory war, and whose religious partners hint that God affirms war and favors the rich at the expense of the poor, is to revile Martin," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which the slain civil rights leader helped establish."
As an aside, I found this today and had to laugh at it...the very idea that these are Republican core principles is what the Left and the media have propagated and why Republicans will continue to lose until these ridiculous claims are dispelled once and for all.
THIS IS CLASSIC
FT, also, there is absolutely no definitive information re: his political party. His family was Republicans, that's known....but the word is he'd probably left it for the Klan having veered more to the Right.
That the Klan veering toward the Right is another reason Republicans are demonized. It's like the far right in Europe; they're the ones who are for sovereignty, for fighting illegal immigration, yet they sometimes enter into that 'never never land' of xenophobic comments (or what sounds like it) and, sadly, anti semitism, then EVERYTHING GOOD they have to say is completely negated....it's why the Right has trouble with the Left's constant reminders of "FAR RIGHT WING"...we are no more anti Semitic or FAR RIGHT wing (NO bloggers I know are) than any centrist or Democrat but the FAR RIGHT..is, let's face it..RIGHT wing.
The Left can go as FAAAAR as they like...they're into FASCISM and Socialism right now, but does anybody care and call it SO PEJORATIVELY THE FAR LEFT WING? NO, that's FINE, as long as it's LEFT> BS>
Oh lissen, FT, it was around 1950, the woman was quite elderly and had no doubt been through plenty of racist stuff in her life. I can't hold it against her, I just think it's sad. But I think it did contribute to my sensitivity to accusations of white people by blacks, and to the liberal type stereotypes I see in Mockingbird.
From a Harper Lee website:
"An illustrated English edition appeared in Moscow in 1977 for propaganda reasons. In the foreword Nadiya Matuzova, Dr.Philol., wrongly stated that "Harper Lee did not live to see her fiftieth birthday," and added perhaps rightly: 'But her only, remarkable novel which continued the best traditions of the American authors who wrote about America's South - Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell and many others - will forever belong in the treasure of progressive American literature.'"
http://www.harperlee.com/bio.htm
It's in good company of course, if progressive.
i am suprised by this if i must be honest!.. i enjoyed neither!!... does this mean i am not conservative?... he he!!
I've always wondered what it would have looked like if someone like Joseph McDonald or James Wong Howe had done the cinematography but they may have made it a little too shadowed, high contrast.
"Stand up Miss Jean Louise. Your father is passing..."
It is VERY difficult to pull off a scene like that without making it sappy.
What strikes me most is that it is a rare occurrence when the book and the film are both highly regarded.
Pat, no! You can still be a conservative, but you can't be my friend! (heh heh!!) That's interesting...anything particular bother you about the story?
Ducky, I have always thought the cinematography was wonderful but I REALLY can't do that dark, shadowy thing. Do you know I can't enjoy CITIZEN KANE like most do because of that..or a film like The MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS? SO dark, with almost no 'relief' that it bothers me. It is rare that both are so highly regarded and, more remarkably, that the film is so close to the book. As I said earlier, Richard Russo's NOBODY'S FOOL (not exactly a classic book OR film by a long shot) struck me as astonishingly close.
Does knowing that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were childhood friends affect your view of Mockingbird in any way? If so how and why?
-------------------
Well it's pretty well known that the character "Dill" is in fact a stand in for her very close friend, Capote.
The book is consistently concerned with people who for one reason or another don't fit, including Scout.
Thank you, Ducky. I'm sure you're exactly right about Ms. Lee and Mr. Capote's relationship and the influence it had on her book.
You're right too in saying the work focuses on "people who don't fit," and (I would add) the problems they encounter and the often-sorrowful-sometimes-tragic conflicts their presence engenders.
I have no problem at all with the character of Atticus Finch, but I see him as more of a SYMBOL for the way "normal" people SHOULD behave toward others rather than a real-life, flesh-and-blood human being. Atticus Finch is larger-than-life --- the stuff of Myth and Legend.
If you want to put it in Christian terms, Atticus Finch could be seen more as a stand-in for Jesus Christ than anything else. The courage he exhibits, the ideals and principles he champions, his commitment to Truth, and the affection and understanding he displays towards his children and "those less fortunate" is anything BUT anti-Christian. If anything, Atticus Finch EXEMPLIFIES the Christ Ideal.
I will get into trouble for saying this, but once again I would insist that the essence of Christianity lies in the way we treat ourselves and others. It has very little to do with mere words and strict obedience to certain precepts.
I hasten to add, however, that obedience to the Decalogue and the Sermon of the Mount would certainly result in a kinder, more compassionate, more constructive society and greater fulfillment of our individual lives.
The sad tendency to use "The Rules" as justification for pointing accusatory fingers at others and feeling self-righteous is where the whole thing goes wrong.
It's never about improving OTHERS, it's supposed to be about improving OURSELVES. Only by BEING better people could we hope to influence others for good, and even then it ain't easy.
End of sermonette. ;-)
~ FreeThinke
I will get into trouble for saying this, but once again I would insist that the essence of Christianity lies in the way we treat ourselves and others. It has very little to do with mere words and strict obedience to certain precepts.
I hasten to add, however, that obedience to the Decalogue and the Sermon of the Mount would certainly result in a kinder, more compassionate, more constructive society and greater fulfillment of our individual lives.
---------------------------
Won't get any argument here.
"I hasten to add, however, that obedience to the Decalogue and the Sermon of the Mount would certainly result in a kinder, more compassionate, more constructive society and greater fulfillment of our individual lives."
However, if you were to obey that yourself, you'd have to give up much of your notions of freedom, FT.
It all depends on how you loot at it, CJ.
'Nuff said.
~ FT
Ack! I haven't read blogs in FOREVER. This is definitely one of my favorite books and movies. The best portayal of justice, manhood, and morals I had read / seen at that time in my life.
Oh, Gregory Peck! ::swoon!::
I wanted to name my first born Gem, or Scout. I also wanted to be Atticus when I grew up.
No, I don't see this as liberal propganda.
No, it doesn't matter to me that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were friends. Jesus was friends with tax collectors and prostitutes.
Uh...not comparing gays to tax collectors and prostitues. I hope my point wasn't lost.
Strikes me all the more poignant that the little boy who supposedly "was" Truman Capote actually died of AIDS years later.
I hope he wasn't at all hurt in the filming of that movie.
obviously the topic addressed was groundbreaking z, but i really wasn't moved in the least by its "literary" brilliance. or gregory peck's less than inspiring portrayal. well call me in the minority i guess....
Atticus Finch was voted the #1 hero of all time by the Screen Actors Guild or one of those organizations.
The movie Capote shows the friendship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Interesting movie.
I suspect many right wingers would call Atticus a saint and like John McCain deny recognition to Martin Luther King.
Atticus is a two edged sword and does allow us to ignore a lot of guilt.
Ducky, what planet are you living on?
Looks like the mostly liberal American Film Institute beat us knuckle dragging, unthinking Conservatives to it: Atticus was voted their Number One Hero in 2003.
Ya, Ducky "Gee, we can relax and not feel GUILTY about slavery and racism now because ATTICUS FINCH WAS WHITE and HE helped a Black man!" get real
W always say so much about ourselves than we do about any given subject when we venture an opinion that is truly our own and not just an echo of generally accepted sentiments, don't we?
That's probably why blogs are so incredibly fascinating.
~ FreeThinke
good movie, better book...
And Tom was married and knew that if he looked at a white woman the wrong way he was a dead man, that's why he resisted Mayella's advances.
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