Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Harper Lee's novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960) is commonly considered a coming-of-age story adult that deals with the theme of race. discrimination in the American South during the Great Depression. A close examination of the novel reveals many ambiguities that contradict this broad reading of the text. In fact, the novel is constructed on contradictory terms, with many stereotypes and prejudicial depictions of scenes and characters clashing with the traditional reading of the novel. The novel's contradictory ideas rely on a sense of unreality that hangs over the novel's setting, plot, and dialogue. This unreality is better understood as a kind of willful naivety which imposes a childish vision of events on action and paints an equally childish image of moral and societal realities. Jennifer Murray examines the novel's ambiguous underpinnings in her article "More Than One Way." for (Mis)reading a Mockingbird" (2010). In this article, Murray rejects many of the traditional critical readings of the novel, seeing them as based on a superficial understanding of the text. In order to explain the thematic contradictions of the novel, Murray explores the evolution of the novel since its first incarnation as a series of disconnected short stories One of the first traditional ideas that Murray rejects is the idea that the novel is somehow Scout's story about the. Coming-of-age Murray notes that Scout, unlike Jem, never makes the transition from childhood to adolescence in the novel only through the flashback framing of the story. that Scout's maturity is conveyed in the action of the story itself, Scout remains rooted in childhood, "Scout, growing from six to nine years old, does not undergo a radical transformation. does not move from childhood to adolescence, does not, in fact, 'come of age'" (Murray), so the novel is not really his coming-of-age story. Instead, Scout is a narrative device through which the various short stories are integrated into the novel. This technique drives many of the resulting thematic contradictions. The conflicting visions contained in Scout's story are the result of a fantastical experience of the world. The fact that Scout never "comes of age" in the novel is an indication that her child's vision remains intact in the development of her narrative. Scout is therefore an unreliable narrator who presents an unreal vision of her experiences and memories. Murray's analysis of the novel's contradictions rests largely on the assumption that Lee's narrative technique was more practical than elegant. She notes that: “The text embodies contradictory impulses in the thematic areas of race, gender, patriarchy, class, and narrative structure; these contradictions, which belong to history, mark the text as surely as the repressed produces symptoms” (Murray). Murray's estimation of the novel is that it expresses Lee's limitations as a novelist in thinking outside of cultural and racial stereotypes. However, what is more likely and more robustly defensible is the idea that the novel's contradictions represent Scout's limitations as an unreliable narrator and that the unreal and childish elements of the story are a deliberate choice made by Lee in order to emphasize its theme. of lost innocence and racial discrimination. Once again, it is worth remembering that interpretationsThe traditions of the novel are generally simple and are likely to gloss over important ambiguities that reveal the story's deeper subtext. For example, Dean Shackelford points out in "The Female Voice in 'To Kill a Mockingbird': Narrative Strategies in Film and Novel" (1996) that the film version departs from the predominantly female point of view that is intrinsic to the novel. . Shackelford's interpretation of the novel is that it "depicts a young girl's love for her father and brother and the experience of growing up during the Great Depression in a racist, segregated society that uses superficial values and materialistic in judging outsiders, including the powerful character Boo Radley. "A close examination of each of the assertions reveals that most, if not all, of Shackelford's assumptions are untenable. Even themes as rudimentary as womanhood or racial equality are subject to ambiguity when one examines the text closely. For example, the character of Calpurnia is commonly seen as a representation of racial integration. She is considered a member of the Finch family and appears to be presented as such in the novel. However, as Murray points out, the real status of. Calpurnia is that of an overworked servant “Calpurnia is a housekeeper, cook, and babysitter, but there is no clear indication of when her workday begins or ends or how much she is paid. for her services" (Murray) Because she is both a woman and an African-American, Calpurnia's portrayal in the novel unfortunately conveys harmful stereotypes against minorities, for both racial reasons. and sexual. Calpurnia's status as a servant fits other stereotypes that are embedded in the foundations of the novel. The central character of Atticus Finch, for example, is the embodiment of idealized patriarchal power. Throughout the novel, he is portrayed as the quintessential father who prioritizes compassion and wisdom over violence and power. This conception of Atticus is almost necessary for the plot of the novel to succeed. However, Atticus' true nature is much less tolerant and practical than it appears at first glance. Murray argues that Atticus is, in fact, a strangely ineffective character whose narrow-minded commitment to unspecified moral principles renders him incapable of acting with relevance or force. Murray notes that “Atticus, in his strict moral principles, is also plagued by an inability to assess danger. His motto is "it's not time to worry yet", a way of reassuring his children that things will always go well, but of course, that is not the case. " (Murray). Again, as with the character of Calpurnia, Atticus's basic stereotype is obvious, but its relationship to the novel's deeper thematic contradictions is only evident upon close reading. A dynamic similar is present regarding the novel's generally assumed status as Scout's coming-of-age story. As mentioned previously, very little in the novel suggests Scout's development into adulthood. Instead, it is Jem who undergoes the transformation from childhood to adolescence. According to Murray, it is Jem's growth, rather than Scout's, that should be seen as the focal point of the passage's theme. in the novel's adulthood Murray notes that "to conclude the issue of To Kill a Mockingbird as a Bildungsroman, it is sufficient to say that the examples focusing on Jem's emotional growth could be multiplied." that Jem's coming-of-age story actually gives thenovel several protagonists. If the novel has more than one protagonist, the question arises as to which of the two protagonists is central. Murray observes that “To kill a mockingbird is a. novel without a clear protagonist, settling for a first-person narrator with dual perspectives” (Murray). However, there is a very clear distinction between the two protagonists: Jem is the only one of the two whose transition from child to. The teenager is shown to the reader. The fact of Scout's development through puberty and beyond to maturity is implied but it is never dramatized. This means that Scout's character is effectively left in a state of perpetual innocence while Jem is clearly shown being initiated into the cynic. reality of young adults. Jem's painful loss of evidence is presented dramatically after he experiences Tom's verdict.Robinson's trial. Lee writes, “It was Jem's turn to cry,” and as Jem walks away from the courthouse, he verbally expresses his disillusionment: “It's not right,” he muttered” (Lee 215 ). The guilty verdict means leaving Jem behind. the comfortable innocence of his childhood illusions. Scout's innocence is not shown to be broken during this scene. The fact that Jem is the vehicle for the theme of the majority of the novel means that Scout's contrasting innocence is brought to the forefront of the story due to the fact that the narrative is told exclusively in her voice. Shackelford points out that Scout's status as the novel's sole narrator ensures that "the reader sees all events through the eyes of a little girl" (Shackelford). This statement is of central importance because it relates to the thematic ambiguities and contradictions previously explored. Scout is the story's main protagonist and its sole narrator. As such, everything in the novel must be considered as seen from Scout's point of view. Scout's perpetual naivety is indicated by the fact that her coming of age is not revealed to the reader. The ambiguities and contradictions which affect the themes of the novel are therefore the result of a childish simplification of reality. This is the reason, for example, why Calpurnia's slave status is buried in the text under a veneer of familial inclusion. Such a veneer reflects Scout's perpetual innocence. The naivety that colors Scout’s perspective is clear from the ambiguities discussed above. However, there is another structural detail, perhaps even more fundamental, that shows how this perpetual innocence fuels the novel with a sense of unreality. Chura's essay in Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents (1994) makes the case that the novel conflates two periods of American history. Although the novel's apparent setting is during the Great Depression, Chura maintains that many details of the fictional trial of Tom Robinson are taken from the real-life trial of Emmet Till which took place in 1955. Chura states that "a presence in To Kill a Mockingbird is the structural and ideological detail of the Emmett Till trial of 1955…The mid-1950s/early civil rights era is therefore the context from which the novel is best understood” (Chura). This strange mix of eras fits into the way Lee's narrative strategy presents a story steeped in unreality and fantasy. Cura goes further in analyzing the historical context of the novel. According to Chura, "Lee's historical context in the 1930s, although developed in some detail, should not obscure the actual conditions that governed the production of the text in approximately 1955 to 1959" (Chura). In other words, Scout's recollection of eventsin the context of the narrative itself is an act of distorting history by placing the social themes and ideas of the mid-1950s in a fictional setting based in the 1930s. If the historical inaccuracies and thematic ambiguities of To Kill a Mockingbird are simply seen as weaknesses in Lee's technique or thinking, an important aspect of the novel, perhaps the most important, risks going unnoticed. It’s the fact that the intended effect of these apparent “errors” is to show the entire story through the eyes of a child. This narrative strategy actually results in the novel presenting a unified theme despite its apparent ambiguities and inconsistencies. The unification lies in the implied loss of innocence that Scout experienced through her voice in the novel, but which is never directly shown to the reader. The perpetual feeling of fantasy and unreality aims to express the collective social denial of the reality of racism and its crimes. It is through our own loss of innocence that each of us, as readers, experience the tragic consequence of Tom Robinson's death.conviction and murder. We must break the fantasy world constructed from Scout's childish vision. Jem's painful initiation into adulthood is meant to incite a tragic, even bitter, reading of the events of Tom Robinson's trial. On the other hand, the absence of an “on-screen” transition towards maturity in Scout allows each reader to subjectively experience this loss of innocence. It is a complex narrative approach but one that relies on a careful reading of the text. For example, in Chapter 25, Scout is surprised by Jem's refusal to let her squash a bug. Jem, having been introduced to a world of experience, is incapable of killing, while Scout, on the other hand, remains in a state of childish naivety where killing a “roly-poly” has few moral consequences. Scout reveals that she is aware of both Jem's transition to adulthood and her own uninitiated state. She reflects that “That was probably part of the stage he was going through, and I wish he would have hurried up and taken it” (Lee 242). In Scout's mind, all that is necessary is for Jem to "get over" whatever has disrupted their sense of innocence and security. Previously, Boo Radley's fabricated danger was the only perceived threat to their sense of safety. After Tom Robinson's conviction, Jem no longer believes in a safe world. His rejection is based on anger and sadness. In contrast, Scout is only beginning to suspect that something is wrong, and she senses this threat primarily through Jem's personality changes. Annie Kasper in the article "General Semantics in to Kill a Mockingbird" (2006) refers to the concept of "infinite values". This concept “asserts that all things can have values ​​in a wide variety of gradations” and furthermore that “the limitations of human language often prevent us from making these distinctions” (Kasper). While Jem's loss of innocence allows her to begin to see a world based on infinite values, Scout remains rooted in a naive perspective that favors stereotypes and dramatic distinctions. Kasper directly connects the concept of infinite values ​​to how Boo Radley is revealed to the world. drive. Kasper writes: “Boo Radley is called scary and strange because he never ventures out of his house. The townspeople associate this strangeness with evil and harbor prejudice against Boo" (Kasper). The same type of prejudice is obviously directed against Tom Robinson on the basis of race. While Jem and Scout come to understand Boo Radley from a more personal point of view At this level, their fear dissipates This plot arc is frequently cited as evidence of the theme... 2015.