To Kill a Mockingbird

In To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout posits that her most valuable education did not occur in school. For the highly self-motivated and intelligent Scout, her school’s curriculum is slow-moving and mind-numbing. Having learned to read with Atticus well in advance of the first grade, she is dismayed when her teacher, Miss Caroline, discourages her from reading at home. Fortunately, Scout and Atticus agree to a compromise: “If you’ll concede the necessity of going to school, we’ll go on reading every night just as we always have” (35).

Both Scout and Jem learn a great deal through their collective role models—including Atticus, Calpurnia, and Miss Maudie—and the storytelling games they play. In these games, they try on the roles of literary and film heroes as well as local legends from their own neighborhood (such as Boo Radley). While these real-world games of pretend bear little resemblance to the lived experiences of those around them, they prime both children for their deeper exploration of what it means to “climb into [someone’s] skin and walk around in it” (33). 

This ability is further developed when the children enter into new social territories, where they communicate with people of different economic and racial backgrounds. When Walter Cunningham joins the Finch family for their midday meal, Scout comes to respect everything from his advanced agricultural knowledge (as the son of a poor farmer) to his penchant for pouring molasses on his food. When the children join Calpurnia as guests at her all-Black church, they learn to appreciate the church’s unique culture (including their communal generosity in providing for Tom Robinson’s wife, Helen).

Not all of the knowledge learned from experience is positive, however. Through their exploration of new social territories, Scout and Jem encounter the great imbalances of Maycomb’s social systems, many of which trace back—in some way—to literacy. When completing their current-events assignments in school, children are looked down upon for referencing the local agricultural paper (or being unable to procure any paper at all). When Scout and Jem ask Calpurnia why the Black members of her church don’t use hymn books, she explains that almost none of them know how to read. As Jem explains to Scout, “Background doesn’t mean Old Family […] I think it’s how long your family’s been readin’ and writin’” (258). 

The theme of damaging prejudice is established from the beginning of To Kill A Mockingbird through Scout’s excavations of the gossip surrounding Boo Radley. Because the Radleys don’t engage in open communication or visit with neighbors, ridiculous rumors spread and fester within the community. Jem even suggests that this gossip may be the reason Boo refuses to go outside: "I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley stayed shut up in the house all this time…it’s because he wants to stay inside” (259).

The events surrounding the Tom Robinson trial also deepen Scout and Jem’s understanding of gossip, prejudice, and mob mentality. More specifically, they illustrate that disturbing racist beliefs often emerge from people they see every day. As Atticus explains to Jem after the jailhouse mob confrontation, “Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know” (179).

Scout observes the spread of such disturbing groupthink even after the trial, through the gossip of people like Miss Stephanie and other members of her Aunt Alexandra’s missionary circle. One Sunday, Scout listens as the women of this group communicate their disdain for the righteous anger expressed by their Black servants over the guilty verdict. She also overhears her school teacher emerging from the courthouse post-trial, saying, “it’s time someone taught ‘em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us” (283). Scout recognizes the hypocrisy in these statements and wonders how fully-grown adults are able to maintain such clearly conflicting viewpoints.

Atticus explains, however, that accumulated experience—years of absorbing the gossip and prejudiced statements of those around you—taints the reasoning of otherwise reasonable people. When discussing how the jury arrived at a guilty verdict in the Tom Robinson trial, Atticus elucidates, “There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried” (251).

Conversely, To Kill A Mockingbird also examines the strange value of gossip in southern communities. Though often vicious, exaggerated, or simply untrue, gossip dictates the importance of an event, and when no one talks about an event, it is quickly forgotten. For example, the death of Tom Robinson occupies the hub of Maycomb’s gossip for merely two days, then, tellingly, fades from public consciousness.