Ilana Finkleman
January 3 / 2013
Inquiry Seminar: Proposal
For my inquiry project, I plan to investigate literary criticism and pedagogy around Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I will be teaching this novel to a class of 9/10s at my practicum school. They are an accelerated class and meet every day which gives me the opportunity to dig deeply into issues exposed in the novel.
The novel is rich with history and issues of morality that are very relevant to students’ experiences in contemporary Canada. Of particular interest to me is the notion of striated societies and how certain characters in the novel push past the boundaries that align and keep small-town society and ideology in line and functioning according to the status quo. Rebecca H. Best discusses the importance of boundaries and adhering to the strict patterns laid out by society in her article on Mockingbird. According to Best, Mockingbird demonstrates the structure of a society that is deeply regulated by the way people are expected to behave and act. Anyone who is outside this strict regiment is attacked or attemptively forced back into the mould that holds fast to the status quo; Best offers that society acts as its own Panopticon (Foucault’s term from Discipline and Punish) or watchdog of sorts and keeps itself in check. Certain characters in Mockingbird also exist outside the rule-bound and kept in-check operation of society in the novel – these characters are considered insane by the other characters – this being the only mechanism to which they can act outside the highly regimented social code that structures society in Maycomb (ex. Boo Radley, Dolphus Raymond). Such a theory on societal structure is translatable and potentially relevant to students’ own understanding of their own daily activity in microcosmic friend groups, their personal belief systems, or life in Vancouver/Canada, more generally. The importance of being a boundary-pusher and attempting to destabilize societal order in order to support what is morally the right thing to do is also a model students may be inspired by.
Also central to this novel are issues of prejudice and ideology. Understanding the effects of education, the historical context and mindset of the times, and the influence of the people you interact with on the way prejudice develops is also central to the novel and again applicable to students’ own experiences. I am awaiting the arrival of a book from the library which contextualizes the novel in the time it was written (the Civil Rights period) and also the time in which it took place (the Depression in the 30s). This book by Claudia Durst Johnson offers information about the trials of the Scottsboro boys – black boys accused of raping a black girl, and supposedly the story Lee based the trial of Tom Robinson on, the symbol of the pure and virginal white Southern woman and the threats posed to her purity, a history of lynching, etc. Having an awareness of the history that enrobes this historical fiction is necessary to breaking into its complexity. Also important is recognizing our own institutionalized prejudices and how these cloud the way we operate in our society.
Finally, pedagogical theory around this novel suggests utilizing role play – having students act out and decide on decisions around the difficult moral situations presented to characters in this novel as a tool for students to engage kinesthetically with the complex moral situations facing many of the characters who challenge the status quo. Also, paralleling and drawing connections between scenarios which challenge moral positioning from the novel with scenarios which are relevant to students’ current life experiences might be a useful angle of exploration of the moral complexities in the novel.
Works Consulted
Best, Rebecca H. “Panopticism and the Use of the Other in To Kill a Mockingbird.” Mississippi Quarterly 62.3 (2009): 541 – 560. Web.
Durst Johnson, Claudia. To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1994. Print.
—.Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1994. Print.
Gibbons, Louel C. To Kill a Mockingbird in the Classroom: Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes. Urbana: National Council of English Teachers, 2009. Print.
Peters, Mike. “Examining a Set Text – To Kill a Mockingbird Fifty Years on.” NATE CLASSROOM 12 (2010). 34. Web. Jan 4 2013.
Saney, Isaac. “The Case Against To Kill a Mockingbird.” Race & Class 45.1 (2003). 99-105. Web. Jan 4 2013.
Stiltner, Mitzi-Ann. “Don’t Put Your Shoes on the Bed: A Moral Analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird.” MA Thesis, 2002. Web. Jan 4 2013.
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