We’ve all thought about it: why study literature? Why study a choice text? For any sort of historically-based fiction, the belief system and ideological landscape during which a text was written and of which a text is set transforms the text object into a potential cultural artifact. Cultural artifacts are situated within a very specific socio-historic (and oftentimes political) moment, and the unique circumstances of the moment give rise to an attitude and belief system that can often be found refracted in the text. In comparing the text as artifact that was borne in an era where attitudes and beliefs shaped its contents to the current climate of students’ lives and the artifacts they produce in the here and now, the text may help to guide students towards comparisons of just what pre-empted the way of life, value systems, and prejudices depicted in the text and students’ way of life, value systems, and prejudices in the now. For Deborah Appleman, “our responsibility as literature teachers is to help make the ideologies inherent in texts visible to our students” (3). My inquiry project sets out to explore the importance of contextualizing a text (in my case, To Kill a Mockinbird) in its historical moment (the Depression-era South), in the moment in which it was written (during the American Civil Rights movement), and in its relevance to students’ experiences as Vancouverites and teenagers in the present moment. My inquiry project investigates the literary criticism around the central issues of prejudice, stereotyping, and social striation that are inherent in the society of Harper Lee’s fictional, but exemplar Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, and most importantly how these criticisms can be used pedagogically to introduce students’ to the concept of ideology, their existing within a particular moment in time and space, and challenging students to think outside the limitations of the status quo.
Published in 1960, in the clash of the American Civil Rights movement, TKAM is a text that demands our understanding of the social, political climate in which it was birthed. As author Lee was writing her novel, prejudice and racism against African Americans had reached a critical moment in where they could no longer tolerate their inferiority in American society (no right to vote, segregations in the public sphere, etc). Her novel of addressing issues of moral injustice within a highly segregated and striated Southern society speaks to the fight of African Americans within the moment of the text’s inception.
The fictional town of Maycomb illustrates a highly striated Southern town. It is divided into classes, where the white town folk preside at the top of the pyramid, followed by the more honest working folk (exemplified in the Cunninghams), the lawless country folk (exemplified by the Ewells), and finally followed by the Negroes, on the lowermost tier. Prejudice runs rampant in Maycomb – culminating in the iconic trial scene where the innocent black man Tom Robinson is convicted by a bigoted jury of rape against a white girl. The strict societal order is maintained by pressure from within to maintain things as they are – something Claudia Durst Johnson argues in her book TKAM: Threatening Boundaries is central to post Civil War Southern mentality. Rebecca H. Best discusses the importance of boundaries and adhering to the strict patterns laid out by society in her article on TKAM. According to Best, TKAM 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. Examples of the town self-regulating itself are the lynch mob which attempts to murder Tom Robinson for appearing to attempt to elevate himself to the same level as the whites, Aunt Alexandra who criticizes the tom-boy Scout for not acting like a lady, and the townspeople’s violent criticisms of Atticus’s “nigger-loving” behaviour for defending Tom Robinson in court. Examining the societal structure within the novel helps students to consider if they are complacent and comfortable with the way our society functions. Despite the fact that they may be comfortable with their position in society, perhaps there is injustice being done to others? Should we educate ourselves, and should we care enough to do as Atticus does and stand up for what is right even if it means stepping outside what we deem is societally acceptable?
The stereotyped images of the black man, the virginal and pure white woman (the Southern “belle”), the Southern gentleman, and the sweet little girl all feed into a notion of boundaries and stereotyping (Durst Johnson, Understanding TKAM: A Student Guide to Issues). Yet, in Lee’s town of Maycomb, characters don’t necessarily adhere to their stereotypical representation. For example, the archetypal black character is shown as sensitive, rounded, and gentle; the little girl is not the budding Southern Belle, but a tom-boy; and Atticus does not adhere to the patterns of racialized thinking typical of the Southern Gentleman, instead he stands up for equality and the rights of those who are stripped of them. In such, the book gestures towards change and a society where boundaries and preservation of a hierarchically-built societal order, based on assumptions, stereotyping, and prejudice don’t work. The book acts as a tool which pushes students to consider stereotypes our society currently subscribes to; it pushes them to think about how these have been formed and how they influence the way we think and feel about the group or identity being stereotyped. Carl Levine explains that by unearthing the socio-historical context around a text, students may be pushed to “examine their own culture-bound biases, and the social consequences of their attitudes” (31).
J. D. Wilhelm explains that “literary theory is not only engaging to students because it helps them to see the world in a new way and to wield power in that world, but because it helps them and us enter into and understand positions other than our own in a diverse and complex world” (129). Students will be asked to consider their society and forces that help to shape their belief systems, their values, and what they consider as Canadian values. Is Canada (and North America) as equal rights driven as students think? Uncovering issues of injustice that still present themselves in the present moment is an important component to connecting this text with students’ present-day lived experiences. How might a First Nations’ text written in the present about the past reflect the current battle for land claims and land protection being waged in the Idle No More movement? Students might consider the recent battle for gay marriage in Canada and the United States, as another option.
Finally, pedagogical theory around this novel suggests utilizing role play – having students act out and work through 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 (Gibbons). Also, paralleling and drawing connections between scenarios which challenge moral positioning within the novel alongside issues of rights and fairness in contemporary Canada could serve as a useful tool for connecting the history of the novel to our current making-of-history.
Lisa Taylor and Michael Hoeschsmann explain that the teaching of cultural literacy, the “cultural and historically inflected knowledge that [every child should know]” or more recently expanded to “multicultural literacy” to encompass a plurality of cultural knowledges, is an integral part of classroom education (219). Rather than treating the text as an insular object, as do advocates of the New Criticism approach, students are asked to examine the text as a cultural artifact reflective of the time and place at which it was written, and of the time and place of which it comments on. Appleman iterates the importance of being able to analyze texts not just from the inside out, but also “from the outside in” (22). In teaching the literary classics, “our approach needs to be less parochial, less narrowly “literary” than it so often is, and more human and self-involving, more ‘integrative’…” (Levine 28). Literature can be used as a tool to examine our value systems, our socio-political context, and the mindset of our times (not just that of the text); it can also act to create an awareness of the influence of our friends and family members, our interests, and our ambitions on how we develop and engage as citizens of this world.
Works Cited
Appleman, Deborah. Critical Encouther in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents. 2nd ed. New York:
Teacher’s College Press, 2009. Print.
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.
Levine, Carl. “Literature and Social Relevance.” The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 24.1 (1969): 25-
32. Web.
Milner, Joseph O. & Carol A. Pope, eds. Engaging American Novels: Lessons from the Classroom. Urbana Illonois, National
Council of English Teachers, 2011. Print.
Taylor, Lisa & Michael Hoechsmann. “ Beyond Intellectual Insularity: Multicultural Literacy as a Measure of Respect.” Canadian
Journal of Education 34.2 (2001): 219-238. Web.
Wilhelm, J. D. “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk (And Think) about: Using Literary Theory to Enliven Our Classrooms.” English
Journal (2002): 128-130. Web.
Additional Works Consulted:
Blau, Sheridan. Building Bridges between Literary Theory and the Teaching of Literature [Online Report]. New York: University of Albany, 1993. 1-21. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/blaubridges.pdf
Peters, Mike. “Examining a Set Text – To Kill a Mockingbird Fifty Years on.” NATE CLASSROOM 12 (2010). 34. Web.
Stiltner, Mitzi-Ann. “Don’t Put Your Shoes on the Bed: A Moral Analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird.”
MA Thesis, 2002. Web.