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I might have a peep at the flick, but I'm not going to read the novel until Hardy personally apologizes to me for that Tess tripe.

Seen this one, once (dim recollection)

The entire plot is played out within the first three lines of the poster.

Godwottery?

I started to read the novel on Monday and wondered why iI'd never head the opening line quoted before? It stuck me as a profound and compelling intro; one that quote collecters would promote. A nice suprise to me as a reader though, to encounter an unfamiliar gem.

psittacism

Yes and no.

You made me think, why am I here debating this book; dissecting the characters?

Atticus is a good man doing the best that he can in bad times. A cosy story that is dear to so many. Mockingbird is a fiction. It is exactly what its editors wanted it to be, a cosy story; as simple as that. It has its heroes and villains, good versus evil, and an ending that is sad yet satisfying at the same time.  It's like a Mary Poppins or a Lassie and here I am demanding validity from the fiction as if it were fact. So what if there are a few mixed morality issues if you dig deep? I may as well be criticizing the validity of Mary Poppins’ ability to fly by umbrella.

I must learn to let it be.

Why am I spending so much time and energy discussing a book that I don’t particularly like when I could be in the company of the literature that I love; or heaven forbid, writing something myself?

The argument here looks set to descend into a contentious argument upon one person’s definition of racism over another. I guess that for anyone to make or concede a point about Mockingbird, that it would always come down to that.

But hey, this conversation bought to mind that I did read and really enjoy another novel set in the USA in the 1930’s. I was in hospital a few years ago following an operation and from the Red Cross book-share trolley that was wheeled about the ward, I took a lucky-dip and happened upon ‘The Persian Pickle Club’ by Sandra Dallas. I think it is deemed to be within the genre called ‘Women’s Fiction’ and I read it under the influence of medication; but it was good, very good. It made me feel good whilst I was feeling bad. It probably sold about fifty copies to Harper Lee’s six hundred and fifty million but I’d readily give it a score of 8 to Mockingbird's 5.

Onwards, corrabird, I think that my participation within the discussion upon Harper Lee’s Mockingbird is done. I shall be active in respect of chat upon other books, over on the other channel.

In the meantime; yes… kill as many blue jays as you like; slaughter them, but never, ever harm a metaphorical hair upon the head of the mythical Mockingbird.
x

I'm not saying this is not the way people in Alabama in the '30's spoke. I'm just saying that racism is endemic within that time and place and in terms of the perception of racial boundaries, Atticus is in there with the best of them.

I'm looking deeply into why I sense that Atticus is an overt racist, in order to reply to Memphis...

In Chapter 20, Atticus says in response to a heinous lie;   

"Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson's skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you."

Why automatically bring Tom's skin color into it? Black is evil, right?  The lie is as as symbolically evil as Tom's skin tone? I'm reading this I'm thinking WTF!!

The truth? Well, that'd be as white and pure as Atticius's skin, I suppose.

Surely someone who is not the victim of endemic racism would say;

"Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as plain as the nose on your face, a lie I do not have to point out to you."

Maybe it's just me being oversensitive, and saying, 'a lie as black as Tom Robinson's skin,' is a perfectly non-racist metaphor.

The same as saying,  'a lie as black as chimney sweep,'   But hold on, the connotation there is dirty or grimy not evil. In Atticus's world a white man with black skin is grimy whilst a black man's skin is abhorrent.

I never thought Atticus was a closet racist. I thought he was an overt racist, conditioned and institutionalized by the history of the time and place he lived in. He couldn't help it, the world was the way it was. He was a good man, kinder and more polite than most. He was more enlightened than most folk at the time and truly believed that the law should not discriminate between races. Therein lay one of the baffling Atticus character enigmas that stopped me buying into the character: he was strongly opposed to inequalities in law (between men, but not women), but promoted inequalities in life.

That to me is weird and 'out of character'. Where is his true conviction? I read novels and stories all the time and when you come across an incomplete or inconsistent character it is like a bad or unconvincing actor, it just doesn't ring true. Atticus is either a poorly written character or a very well written bi-polar sufferer.

The only true in Bell's end, is that it is.