To the editor:
On Saturday, June 11, I went to the Intergenerational Book Group at the library to discuss To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee. While I had seen the movie a number of times, prior to this event being announced I had not read either book. The book group was a great excuse to read them both. I was not expecting to like Go Set a Watchman and I was pretty sure I would not like Atticus after reading it, but on both counts I proved myself wrong.
Atticus was revealed to be a complex and flawed character, but like most flawed people, he was a good man. The setting is again in Alabama, this time in the 1950s, right after the Brown v. the Board of Education decision in which the Supreme Court informed the country that “separate but equal” facilities are inherently unequal. In this book, Atticus continues to be a law-abiding, kind and generous man, but this is the Deep South and the reader knows he is not as enlightened as we liked to think he is when he says to Scout, “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?… Do you want your children going to a school that’s been dragged down to accommodate Negro children?”
To be sure, there are many lines in both books that are capable of provoking an endless stream of conversation, but one of the lines that struck me in a particular way was by Uncle Jack when he said to Scout, “Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
“They both begin where reason ends.” That is not something that had occurred to m, but it smacked me right upside the head when I read it. “When reason ends”—when we have no evidence, no facts, we must fall back on faith or prejudice. I was excited to have a conversation with my neighbors about how this applies to our country, to our state, to our town. What do we do when reason ends—what do we rely on? Who do we want to keep out of our country, our state, or our schools, churches and neighborhood?
Sadly, the only other person that came on Saturday was the Assistant Director Lisa Acker Rothenberg. We were both sorely disappointed; she too had been looking forward to a spirited dialogue with our neighbors. Harper Lee had a brilliant grasp on the morals and conventions of society and was a clever storyteller to boot. It is our loss that we were not able to discuss her work here in Lincoln. It is society’s loss that she was not able to produce more works of literature.
And then on Sunday morning, when all reason had ended, the tragedy of fear and bigotry escalated into tragedy in Orlando.
Sincerely,
Sharon Antia
165 S. Great Rd.
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