Author: Loren

:: The Courage to Live Your Conscience ::

Sometimes just having a conscience isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to do more than merely feel bad because you know something is wrong. Sometimes you actually have to stand up for what you believe in or, as Mark Twain notes in Huckelberry Finn, “… it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.”

Of course, Scout spends most of the novel just developing a conscience. It’s only at the end when she feels bad that she hadn’t ever returned the small gifts that Arthur Radley had left for her and Jem that she is actually able to feel badly about her actions.

In this sense, Atticus is very different than anyone else in the novel. He has the courage to live up to his convictions and refuses to give in to public will and go along with the majority:

"…This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience — Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man."
"Atticus, you must be wrong…."
"How’s that?"
"Well, most folks seem to think they’re right and you’re wrong…"
"They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience."

Sounding an awful lot like Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience” or Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, Atticus puts personal conscience over majority rule. Clearly without such a belief society would never change, because the majority of the people generally believe what society tells them is right. The only way to break out of that mold is for the individual to trust his own beliefs and insights.

If you don’t want your conscience eating away at you and undermining your moral authority, you have to live by its dictates:

"If you shouldn’t be defedin’ 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."

In the end, our moral authority comes not only from our conscience but from our actions. If we believe something but don’t stand up for it, then we are no better than those who hold mistaken beliefs, or those who Joseph Heller indicts when he says, “When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent moral impulse and every human tragedy.”

Considering who he is and what he believes, Atticus could not be a lawyer unless he believed in the justice system as he states in his closing summary in Tom Robinson’s trial:

"I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system–that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family…"

The irony, of course, is that he knows very well this is not going to happen. He’s already told Scout that he is not going to win this case. Paradoxically, he must believe it in order to continue practicing law; yet he knows it is not true precisely because he does practice law, the ultimate Catch-22 for someone with integrity who wants to pursue a legal career.

To take a case like Tom Robinson’s and prosecute it as an honorable man requires a special kind of courage, the kind of courage that Atticus tries to teach his children when he sends them to read to Mrs. Dubose:

"…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."

This is precisely the same kind of courage that Atticus demonstrates in defending Tom Robinson. He says as much when he tells Scout:

"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.

If we all gave up trying to change the world when we knew we were going to lose the battle, we would still be in the dark ages where we stoned people to death for cheating on their husband or where we let people abuse their children because it is “none of our business” and parents “have the right to raise their children anyway they want.” [Oops, my bad, that is the kind of world we still live in, isn’t it?]

Thank goodness there are people out there who do have the courage to speak out against injustice, even if that injustice is cloaked in the power of giant corporations or the power of the government.

Atticus may put his faith in the courts, but I, like Harper Lee, prefer to put my faith in the First Amendment. As long as we have the ability to challenge the government and those running it, we have the chance to change it. Most of us are going to lose our battles, but in the long run those who justly challenge the system seem to prevail.

At its best, democracy provides the means to change those things that are unjust – it just doesn’t seem like it at times.

:: It’s a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird ::

One of the main goals of stereotyping, and prejudice, seems to be to turn other people into outsiders, at best, objects, at worst: those people aren’t human; they don’t have feelings like we do. If we can convince ourselves, or others, of this, then we can use these “others” as we want without feeling guilt.

For this reason, empathy seems to lie at the very heart of conscience. We worry about what happens to others to the extent that we are able to identify with them. Once we identify with other people and feel the way they feel, it’s impossible to treat them differently than we would want to be treated.

At its simplest level, empathy shows us it is wrong to hurt someone who is trying to help us, trying to make our lives better. Atticus strives to teach that to Jem and Scout throughout the novel, beginning with this advice when they receive guns at Christmas:

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."

That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.

"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."

While I personally wouldn’t want my children shooting any living thing, it would be hard to find anyone who would disagree with Atticus’ idea. Mockingbirds don’t do any harm; all they do is sing beautiful songs that make our lives richer. Few would disagree that it is a “sin” to kill one.
It doesn’t take much to extend this idea to the concept that it is a sin to hurt someone who is doing something to help us. After all, if we are helping someone we would certainly expect them to help us, too, or, at the very least, expect them to like us.

If we accept this proposition, the greatest sin in the story was obviously the conviction and killing of Tom Robinson. All Tom Robinson was guilty of was making the mistake of feeling sorry for a white girl and trying to make her life a little easier. Despite the jury’s miscarriage of justice, in their heart of hearts the people of Maycomb must have known that it was a sin to sentence Tom Robinson to death:

Mr. Underwood didn’t talk about miscarriages of justice, he was writing so children could understand. Mr. Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they stand, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children, and Maycomb thought he was trying to write an editorial poetical enough to be reprinted in The Montgomery Advertiser.

The trial is so blatantly unjust that the three children in the story are devastated by the decision. Dill immediately breaks down into tears. Jem becomes angry, sullen, and wants to be left alone, finally realizing how Arthur Radley must feel. Scout searches desperately for some rationale for the decision, but she too realizes in the end what an injustice has been done.

It’s not really until the end of the novel that Scout is really able to apply this sense of sin to life itself. Only after Boo saves the children does Scout fully understand why it’s a sin to hurt someone who is dong nothing but good. Sheriff Tate tries to convince Atticus that it would be wrong to put Arthur Radley on trial for killing Bob Ewell even though he knows he would never be convicted:

"To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an’ draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight-to me, that’s a sin. It’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man it’d be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch."

Atticus obviously agrees with Sheriff Tate but doesn’t want his children to think that he doesn’t live his life by his conscience, that he tells his children one thing but does something different when it’s convenient. After Scout’s reply:

"Scout," he said, "Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?" Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might.
"Yes, sir, I understand," I reassured him.
"Mr Tate was right."
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?"

We realize that she has, indeed, grown up and has developed a conscience. She understands the true meaning of justice because she has empathy for Boo as she has shown by seating him in the dark and, later, by walking him home.

If a child is capable of this much insight, why were so many adults incapable of it?