Part 5 Chapter 25 Portland Noir Scout Mockingbird

Chapter 25 Portland Noir Scout Mockingbird1

"… remember it is a sin to kill a mockingbird." (p. 119) "They don't do but one thing but sing their hearts out for us." "That's why it is a sin…"2

[H. Lee. To Kill A Mockingbird, paper, c. 1999]3

I. Introduction4

School children read this book in school. I suppose the reasoning behind this is to provide children with a view into adult life. But I think it provides an adult, such, as I am, a view into child life changing into young adult life. It is the inevitability of growing up from the utter pristine innocence of childhood.5

We learn that Scout Mockingbird only sings out for us. It would be a sin to kill her singing her song. She is almost six and her brother Jem is nearly ten. (p. 7) Dill their new friend is a year her senior, almost seven. (p. 9) Dill has strange longings. (p. 10) Her father is named Atticus. 6

He is the voice of relentless reasoning. Things are unavoidable: "I am merely bowing to the inevitable," he says about teaching his two children to shoot their new guns. (p. 105) Jem, now twelve was moody. (p. 153) 7

She felt "longings each other felt each other feel", she and Dill. (p. 154) "What's rape?", she asks her cook. (p. 165) She asks her father, again. 8

(p. 180) He answers, "rape was carnal knowledge of a female by force and without her consent." He tells his son, "I'm just trying to tell you the facts of life." His son answers, "I know all that stuff." (p. 177) 9

He says to her, "I'll spank you." She replies, "I'll kill you. (p. 184) 10

"For once, he didn't remind me that people nearly nine years old did not do things like that." He says, "I think its okay, she doesn't understand it." She replies, I most certainly do. I can understand anything you can." (p. 231)11

Of Dill, it was said, "Things haven't caught up with that one's instinct yet." (p. 269) "There are things you don't understand." "A steaming summer's night was no different from a winter morning." (p. 281) "You got it backwards, Dill. Clowns are sad. It’s the people that laugh at them." (p. 289)12

"She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it."13

"She must destroy the evidence of her offense." (p. 272) [the raped girl]14

II. Inevitable progression15

I have here the inevitable progression from the young child to the young woman. Somewhere between nine and twelve, her body will change her. Those longings he felt and she felt him feel are a danger to her body. 16

One's instinct catches her up. Dill, people laugh at you when you are sad, moody. It is when those desires become stronger than her code she was breaking, she will persist in breaking them. And then she must hide that evidence of her offense. He says, she is too young because he is now too old. 17

He understands. She does not yet. When she sees the difference between morning and night, winter and summer, she has ceased her childhood. 18

He spanks, she kills. Jem says, "She ain't nine yet." "She may as well learn it now." (p. 300) "They, [Jem and Dill], said they were going in naked, and that I couldn't come." (p. 305) "I was wearing my pink Sunday dress…" (p. 306) 19

"…teach me to be a lady." "be a lady, so could I." (p. 318) 20

"Where are your britches today?" "Under my dress." (p. 307)"Nome, just a lady." "…until you start wearing dresses more often." (p. 308) "…my overalls." (p. 354) "unhooked my overalls." (p. 376)21

I see the development of a young child of nearly six, Scout, and her brother, Jem, nearly ten, with a four-year difference. As she becomes nearly nine, her brother is nearly thirteen, and Dill is nearly ten, one year her senior. Things are changing for both of them, and for Dill. About Jem, "His eyebrows were becoming heavier, and I noticed a new slimness to his body." (p. 301) "It's hair … and under my arms, too." (p. 302) "…trying to make you a lady." Jem,22

"too slender." (p. 324) [guns] "…shoots at every shadow he sees…" (p. 325)23

"They put their women out in huts when their time came, whatever that was." (p. 305) "…well she is." (p. 306) "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem, four years my senior, the summer that Dill came to us". (p. 3)24

"Our mother died when I [Scout] was two." Atticus was a single parent.25

What are only slightly mentioned are the M and M's: menstruation and masturbation. Without a mother, Scout's knowledge about the former is "whatever that was." And with the latter, Jem and Dill swim naked. She notices a new slimness to his body, "growing taller"; he is too slender.26

From Harper Lee's life long friendship with Truman Capote, and from his writings, I know that Dill is Truman and Truman is gay. This means that sometime in his childhood, Dill began a relationship with boys his age.27

Both Jem and Dill were moody; Dill wanted to be a clown in a circus. He was different, being shorter than Scout, who was a year younger than he was. 28

He was a freak headed for a freak show. He needed the approval of others.29

III. Who was the mocking bird it was a sin to kill?30

For what I have said before, Scout Mockingbird was the child who would be killed by her growing up to be a young lady. Her innocence pristine would vanish with her overalls. She would be wearing pink dresses. And as Harper Lee, she would be writing about "In Cold Blood" with Truman Capote. Some time in her life, she began to know about gay people like Truman, like Dill. He had kissed her shyly and quickly and asked her to marry him; she said yes. Of course, she was nearly nine when he left her and left Jem, as well. Was the mocking bird, Dill as well as Scout as well as Jem? They all grew up, too.31

Harper Lee identifies the mocking birds as like Tom the crippled Negro, "senseless slaughter." (p. 323) "It was a sin to kill cripples," like hunters killing songbirds. Later, it is also a sin to drag a shy man like Arthur Radley into the limelight. (Pp. 369-370) There are other cripples in this story. Jem had his arm "broken at the elbow, his left arm shorter than the right, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh, he stood or walked." (p. 3) Scout is a cripple without a mother and Atticus is a cripple without a wife. Dill is a cripple as a dwarf as a child. The people of the town are cripples because they have sentenced an innocent man. And Tom is a cripple; he would have made it over the fence but for his crippled arm; it is what saved up from the trumpeted up charges. (p. 315)32

Atticus "never loosened an article of his clothing until bedtime", so when he "loosened his tie, to Jem and me, this was equivalent of him standing before us, stark naked." (p. 271) "Gentlemen," he said, he might have said, "Scout."33

"It wasn't rape, if she let you," Jem said, "but you had to be eighteen." What little Scout knew about it, "you had to kick and holler." (p. 279) "He was still on the bed, and I could not get a firm stance, so I threw myself at him, hitting, pulling, pinching, gouging. A fistfight became a brawl." (p. 184)34

IV. Time factors35

Time during the trial that was to be five minutes becomes three hours. (p. 281) Time when the mocking birds are still in winter. Time when summer as the same as winter. Atticus was the only man in town to keep the jury so long out on the case. (p. 289) "children left to their own devices" (p. 326) "Scout you are getting so big now." (p. 331) "Jem's not quite thirteen, no he's already thirteen." (p. 365) "Scout is eight years old." (p. 367) [sic.]36

"It would be sort of like shooting a Mockingbird, wouldn't it?" (p. 370)37

Scout has seeing eyes in a time reversal Metaverse. She alone travels here and there in her mind, back and forth through time, two places at once.38

V. Conclusion.39

"Daylight, in my mind, the night faded. (p. 373) Summer in winter. "his children played in the front yard with a friend, enacting out a strange little drama of their own invention." (p. 374) Winter in summer. "…there wasn't much else to learn once we got grown, except possibly algebra. "Atticus, he was real nice. Most people are, …when you really see them." (p. 376)40

"The law says 'reasonable doubt', but I think a defendant is entitled to a shadow of a doubt," says Atticus. (p. 294) [emphasis mine]"There is always the possibility, no matter how improbable, that he's innocent."41

In the film, Amadeus, Mozart says that Opera is the only medium where you can have eight parts open at once, all singing together but not together. Over shadowing this morality tale is the reasonableness of Atticus, his steadiness of the inevitable consequence of his reasoning. But to us, there are the other parts as well, Scout's niceness, Jem's manhood in childhood, Dill's instincts.42

For those with Dill's instincts, this tale is a hopeful one. In Portland Noir,43

Our Hiro struggles with an unseen opponent, often seen in the mirror image of himself, or in the memory of Yours Truly. It is his inner conflict between what he is and what he would want to be. It was what he wanted even it was worth so much less that what he was giving it up for. He felt compelled, stuck, sliding backwards, so alone. He was giving up. He could not do it.44

Then he met her and took of her love, only to find she had a secret past. It must be quite a blow to find she bleeds, that she has done such a bloody deed as murder, even if child murder, abortion, or been raped. She is tarnished goods; he must make a torturous decision between his lost life and her lost life. Especially if he must give her up to justice: or to the police. This is no simple choice. When did Scout who was to be married to Dill, even she was nine years old, learn about his gay life style? When did she forgive him?45

What would have happened if she had married Dill and then she found out?46

What if Dill had found out that she had murdered Jem in cold blood to protect Dill from being discovered? Could Dill forgive her of any murder, of any sin?47

Do gay people have the same feelings as straight people? Is it a black and white morality tale we are viewing here in Portland Noir? Harper Lee has stayed out of the public eye, even as Truman Capote sought publicity. Can there be another mocking bird here that we best leave alone a shy person?48

We thought this was a story about race and discrimination. It has become so much more than that with revisiting this Noir story in Portland, Oregon.49