Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird by Michael J. Meyer Read Free Book Online Page A

as well as implicit or explicit references to timeless “human behavior” or “human nature.” One such answer includes the statement “[A]s so often happens, people turn their hatred upon the person who simply reminds them of what they are. So, Bob Ewell threatens Atticus.” Critical literacy might be improved by encouraging students to view the narrative of Lee’s novel as a retelling of or a response to one or more “real-world” developments in the civil rights struggles. The fate of Tom Robinson may be viewed in connection with rape trials or lynchings of black men, such as the Scottsboro boys’ trial in the mid-1930s or the murder of Emmett Till in the mid-1950s. The small detail at the trial scene that “[f]our Negroes rose and gave [Jem, Scout, Dill, and Reverend Sykes] their front-row seats” ( TKAM 164) may bring to mind the Montgomery bus boycott. The visit to Calpurnia’s church, the relegation of blacks to the “far corner of the square” before the trial ( TKAM 160, 162), and a number of other details in the novel may encourage students to reflect on the doctrine of “separate but equal” and the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Finally, Mrs. Merriweather’s condemnation of Northern hypocrites in chapter 24—“People up there set ’em free, but you don’t see ’em settin’ at the table with ’em” ( TKAM 234)—may provide an opportunity to explore the sit-ins at lunch counters across the South that were just about to start as Lee’s novel went to press.
    A theoretical sampling of the entire Question & Answer section on To Kill a Mockingbird supports this characterization of the teachers’ answers as lacking familiarity with different approaches in critical literacy and literary theory. In addition to other text searches, a search for the formal terms for different critical approaches yielded no instances of use of the following terms (and, where applicable, the adjectival forms of the terms): New Criticism, Marxism, New Historicism, and feminism.
    Limitations
    The strong presence of the three emerging themes and the weak presence of critical literacy perhaps cannot be generalized beyond the group of teachers who have recently contributed to the Question & Answer section on Lee’s novel at eNotes.com. Such generalization is limited by the examination in this study of postings on only one Internet site. Reviewing a range of online discussion forums and using surveys and interviews to reach teachers who are not active in online discussion forums may reveal additional emerging themes and varying levels of critical literacy. Indeed, such a wider study may lead to a fuller understanding of how teachers at the middle school, high school, and first-year college level talk about Lee’s novel. This limitation is true of all qualitative research; there is always more data to consider. Grounded theory and other methods of qualitative research seek to maximize the opportunities for gaining in-depth information and new insights, explains Michael Patton; these methods do not seek to produce a general “truth” that can be applied with absolute certainty across different settings and different populations.
    Conclusion
    Teachers in middle school, high school, and first-year college classrooms do have a lot to say about To Kill a Mockingbird , and what they say about the novel often reflects their strong attachment to the work and their equally strong interest in sharing that passion with students. Furthermore, what they say reflects a strong familiarity with text-based approaches to literature but a weak familiarity with critical literacy and literary theories and their possible applications to the novel for the purpose of moving past initial, often predetermined readings of the text. Perhaps surprisingly, the answers posted by teachers active at the senior high school and first-year college level