Harper Lee and Stoicism

I have now had the great pleasure and honor of teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, a true great of literature though not without its controversy, to young people for just over fifteen years. The first year my 8th grade class and I read it together, when we had just gotten to the halfway point, I asked them to pick a passage that expressed the moral compass of the story. Almost all the answers were from either of these two passages. I repeated the same assignment just this fall, and those same two passages came up time and time again.

In the first, Atticus is trying to explain to Scout why he will most likely lose the court case, but it is still right to defend Tom Robinson.

In the second, Jem is angry at Mrs. Dubose for all of her insults and abuse, and even angrier when she has left him a gift upon her death. Atticus still defends her.

I hardly know what was going through Harper Lee's mind when she wrote the character of Atticus Finch, but passages such as these seem to be in such perfect harmony with a Stoic world-view. In both cases, a man recognizes the true sources of victory and defeat, not in the ways of the world around him, but within his own character. I felt this when I myself first read the book and saw the film in my early teens, and I feel it still.

Don't let anybody get your goat.
Fight with your head.
Die beholden to nothing and nobody.
Understand what real courage is.

From Chapter 9:
“If you shouldn’t be defendin' him, then why are you doin’ it?”
“For a number of reasons,” said Atticus. “The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.”
“You mean if you didn’t defend that man, Jem and me wouldn’t have to mind you any more?”
“That’s about right.”
“Why?”
“Because I could never ask you to mind me again. Scout, simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess. You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ‘em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change. . . it’s a good one, even if it does resist learning.”
“Atticus, are we going to win it?”
“No, honey.”
“Then why—”
“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said.

From Chapter 11:
Jem’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Old hell-devil, old hell-devil!” he screamed, flinging it down. “Why can’t she leave me alone?”
In a flash Atticus was up and standing over him. Jem buried his face in Atticus ’s shirt front. “Sh-h,” he said. “I think that was her way of telling you — everything’s all right now, Jem, everything’s all right. You know, she was a great lady.”
“A lady?” Jem raised his head. His face was scarlet. “After all those things she said about you, a lady?”
“She was. She had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe. . . son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her — I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.”

Written on 12/16/2010