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An exemplary analysis of the text “To Kill a Mockingbird” by H. Lee




The subject matter of the extract (fragment) is the exposure of the American system of justice, its outspoken essence of racism and inhumanity. The author wants to bring home to the reader the message of objective and judicial penetration into a cruel reality of a bourgeois court. Tom Robinson, a Negro, against whom a charge is brought, is doomed beforehand.

Harper Lee’s work at its best is realistic and takes the tradition popular in the American social novel, the tradition ushered by Mark Twain.

It is through the eyes of a child that events are presented. It should be stated, that the author does not comment upon her personages: she makes them speak, act, think and lets the reader judge for himself.

In the whole of the novel the author’s voice is imperceptibly blended with the narrator’s. In the present case it is almost inaudible, though an attentive reader may be struck by the language a bit sophisticated for the seven-year old Jean Louise.

The extract under consideration opens with the trial scene. Atticus Finch delivers his speech to the jury. The part of the speech dealing with the evidence is not presented on purpose, for both the jury and Atticus are fulfilling their formal duties, the fact that does not escape attention. The author’s art of making a few phrases go far in enabling the reader not only to visualize all the events is manifested in the following: “ Atticus was speaking easily with a kind of detachment he used when he dictated a letter”, “…the jury seemed to be attentive… and they followed Atticus’s route with what seemed to be appreciation”. Conveying much while saying a little is one of the most essential principles of H. Lee’s art. This is achieved by means of countless little touches insignificant in themselves but brimful of meaning. Jean Louise’s description of her father’s walk, slow, “up and down in front of the jury” affords a very good example: the walk betrays the lawyer’s excitement, nervousness.

In order to depict the character of Atticus Finch, a lawyer, H. Lee grants the latter a great speech. Atticus dwells upon the subject of his concern himself, without the aid of any subsidiary onlooker. The effect of indirect speech characterization attains the degree of great emotional force. Atticus is depicted in all his inner essence through the fragments of his monologue. The transmittance of his advocatory piece into indirect speech would have reduced his utterances to a bare scheme devoid of the logical depth and clear-cut vivacity.

Atticus’s speech is an example of oratorical style and it is characterized by features of this type of speech.

For example, Atticus Finch illustrates his speech with the enumeration of the sin of Negroes in the sense white people understood them – that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around white women. The piling of two homogeneous assertions sound as an evil assumption, Atticus ridicules the narrow-mindedness of social opinion of his time. The reiteration of the sentence “There is not a person in this court-room who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire” helps Finch to make his defender’s speech more effective and square. He wants to lay stress upon the fact that men in general are not saints, nobody in the hall is an angel, human weaknesses are inherent in every person. A cumulative conjunction “and” assists in creating a climax of Finch’s proof. The fact of Tom Robinson’s innocence is emphasized to the utmost. The indictment he is charged with (on) is a trifling matter every male being is subjected to. In the paragraph “I say guilt, gentlemen…” Finch exposes the real nature of Mayella Ewell’s claims. She committed not a crime but an offence unpardonable in her society. That’s the reason of her further action – the urgent desire to put away the daily reminder of her guilt. Finch’s proof is sustained by prolonged syntax. He is very thorough in explaining why it happened so. He follows with precision the logical chain of the girl’s consideration when he brings his listeners to the main point of his conclusion – “She must destroy the evidence of her offence”.

We come across an interesting case of the ordinal numeral “first” used as a noun in the sentence. It’s a vivid example of the usage in individual speech the meaning of which is understandable only for its creator, in our case only for the family of the counsel for the defence. The device enables the writer to spare a good deal of description and to make the moment produce expressiveness.

The extract in epithets, similes, metaphors. Such examples of epithets as “a vivid and time-honoured code”, “a code so severe”, “the cynical confidence”, “the evil assumption” reveal Finch’s own attitude to the items he dwells on. The case of a simile in the text: “His voice has lost its aridity, its detachment, and he was talking to the jury as if they were folks on the post office corner” shows that Atticus knows perfectly well how to behave in his plight, but the importance of the matter he is going to win unnerves him, bewilders his steeled self-control. Metaphors in his speech based on the collision of the direct meaning of the word with its contextual implication produce the effect of a high logical statement which contributes much to the potential salvation of the Negro fellow. When Atticus is determined to make a logical assertion concerning the equality of people he brings forward one genuine truth which is generated by the court system that is supposed to be just to everybody - for this court every human is equal, to erase all the distinction between people in the sense of their equality in a social community they live, Atticus takes polar conceptions and arranges them in parallel constructions following one another. A pauper, the stupid man and the ignorant one stand back from a Rockfeller, Einstein and a college president respectively at one and the same distance. The connotative meanings of metaphors present in Finch’s speech are expressive to the utmost.

Two methods of characterization – direct and indirect ones – interweave in the story. From this angle we distinguish two ways of depiction presented by Atticus Finch at the trial and Jean Louise’s commentaries of it. These two methods combined supplement each other making the story sound more real and convincing. The scrupulous enumeration of Atticus’s actions (“unbuttoned his vest, … collar, loosened his tie…”, etc.) speaks volumes both of utter astonishment of the girl at the sight of the behaviour of her father and the excitement which the lawyer is assailed at the moment: he may be compared with the one who is going to dive into unknown waters.

The passage which precedes the part of the speech in the extract serves as an introduction: slight retardation can be noted here.

Jean Louise’s feeling of genuine compassion with her father is fully made aware of to the reader. He is allowed to realize the meaning of what has happened only together with the narrator, not before her. The sparingly given details permit the reader to supply missing links and visualize the scene. The writer manages to reproduce the flood of her heroine’s impressions in the order they strike her: Atticus nervously unbuttoning his vest and collar…, walking slowly up and down, putting his hands in his pockets, Negroes getting up to their feet at the sight of Atticus leaving the court-hall, etc. The unaffected narration with its fixation on seemingly insignificant details makes the reader realize the atmosphere of mistrust, enmity and prejudice of the South of the USA.

Jean Louise is struck at the sound of her father’s voice which “lost its aridity … and he was talking to the jury” (instead of “speaking”). This detail makes the reader fully understand the burden of responsibility, Atticus shoulders. Atticus is manly and experienced, he is fully aware of the futility of his efforts. Yet he does not sneer at the people who are cowed. He persuades rather than accuses (“he was not a thunderer”), he appeals to the conscience, entreats them to overcome their fear, prejudices. This is made clear by the word “Scout”, Jean Louise’s nickname, as if he were talking to his only daughter. Only to the end of the extract the reader is made aware of the audience, both the white and Negroes, filling the court-hall (each to their own places: Negroes in the balcony, whereas the white occupy the stalls, according to “the rigid and time-honoured code of the society”.

The feeling of genuine gratitude of Negroes to Atticus is opposed to the enmity of the white audience. The well-observed detail of Atticus’s lonely walk to the exit after his speech is eloquent of it. Whereas the excitement of Negroes, filling the balcony is emphasized twice: “They were standing. All around us, and in the balcony on the opposite wall the Negroes were getting to their feet”. The inversion in the second sentence is illustrative of the girl’s warm feeling towards Negroes. Jean Louise’s mind registers the closing of the meeting: her thoughts are reproduced the simplest and the most straightforward form.

Appropriately enough when she speaks of her brother Jem, the reader comes to know that his features are identical with hers – her soft strength, her courage, her compassion. Though a child, she is sharply aware of the complexity of the general situation and her father’s part in it. The endless reiteration of “Atticus paused”, “never”, followed by the scrupulous enumeration of Atticus’s actions (“took out his handkerchief”, “took off his glasses”) conveys the tension of the atmosphere of the court-hall. The phrase “we had never seen”, “he was one of those men< whose faces never perspired” – adds weight to the aforesaid.

The effect is achieved primarily by the very obvious contrast between the tremendous gravity of the problem – and the tone the seven-year old child narrates in. The strain at the back of the narration is felt through the repeated mention of “could be expected”, “watch”, “look”, “handed”.

The climax of the story lies in passing the verdict to Tom Robinson. It is expressed in the short passage “I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: guilty… guilty… I peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each “guilty” was a separate stab between them.”. Tom Robinson’s censure is appallingly unjust. While rendering the climax the author uses stylistic means of her own. All the preceding sequence of the text kept the reader in suspense giving the moments of utter intensity. A person involved in the action deeply sympathizes with the young Negro, he waits for the sentence to be pronounced with the pulsation of nerves.

The extract closes with a ray of hope shining against the darkness: there is a suggestion that Atticus will time and again fight race prejudice in the minds of his fellow-citizens.

That belief lifts the extract above pessimism. It finds a vivid embodiment in the portrayal of Atticus, defeated but uncowed fighter for men’s happiness going down the aisle to the exit. And the small pathetic figures of his children are meant to demonstrate the constant renewal of life and hope, the promise held out by young generation.


The subject matter of the extract (fragment) is the exposure of the American system of justice, its outspoken essence of racism and inhumanity.

The author wants to bring home to the reader the message of objective and judicial penetration into a cruel reality of a bourgeois court. Tom Robinson, a Negro, against whom a charge is brought, is doomed beforehand.

1. In order to convince the reader in the authenticity of the facts under observation H.Lee resorts to her own individual stylistic structure of the arrangement of belles-letters material under concern.

The story is delivered by a little girl, the daughter of Atticus Finch, a counsel for the defence at this ignominious trial. The conscious choice of the author is caused by the profound considerations of the latter.

The sequence of events is presented through the prism of perception of the child which imparts the deliverance a certain kind of acuteness marked by sharp spiritual pain. Jean Louise’s presentation of the procedure makes the events more vivid, convincing, real, emotional – the qualities which would have been omitted in case the story had been commented by an adult. A person of years would have been deprived of a peculiar infant’s vision. Jean Louise introduces some details in her narration which would be ignored by seniors and which wouldn’t be included in a different case. She turns out to be very attentive. When she mentioned such an insignificant fact as “Tom toying with official papers”, she reveals a deep solicitude of a child for (towards) the defendant, she can’t miss this regardless item unimportant for the rest. Being a child of her own father Jean scrupulously renders the manner of his conduct in the role of an attorney. She describes it in the most objective way undulating into minute particulars. Only for Atticus’s children was it clear to the utmost what their father’s gradual undressing at the trial meant, what kind of consternation it conveyed. Only a child could be so considerate while pointing out such a moment as winking of the pen which reflected Atticus’s nervousness and agitation.

 

2. In order to depict the character of Atticus Finch, a lawyer, H.Lee grants the latter a great speech. Atticus dwells upon the subject of his concern himself, without the aid of any subsidiary onlooker. The effect of indirect speech characterization attains the degree of great emotional force. Atticus is depicted in all his inner essence through the fragments of his monologue. The transmittance of his advocatory piece into indirect speech would have reduced his utterances to a bare scheme devoid of the logical depth and clear-cut vivacity.

 

3. Two methods of characterization – direct and indirect ones – interweave in the story. From this angle we distinguish two ways of depiction presented by Atticus Finch at the trial and Jean Louise’s commentaries of it. These two methods combined supplement each other making the story sound more real and convincing.

4. The climax of the story lies in passing the verdict to Tom Robinson. It is expressed in the short passage “I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: guilty… guilty… I peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each “guilty” was a separate stab between them.”. Tom Robinson’s censure is appallingly unjust. While rendering the climax the author uses stylistic means of her own. All the preceding sequence of the text kept the reader in suspense giving the moments of utter intensity. A person involved in the action deeply sympathizes with the young Negro, he waits for the sentence to be pronounced with the pulsation of nerves.

The language of the preceding sequence is bookish,

 

5.

6.

7.

8. … fact preconditioned by the position of that “is” at the end of the sentence. The second “guilt’ in the sentence “I say “: guilt’, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her” evidently shows the force of the argument brought by Finch in condemning the girl. In the next sentence we come across the case of syntactical parallelism, where Finch makes out the real nature of Mayella Ewell’s offence. By means of parallelism there is done a distinction between a juridical crime and that one unofficially accepted among people. The noun “code” caught up at a small space creates a stylistic device of anadiplosis where the speaker ascertains the inner essence of social crime. Atticus Finch illustrates his speech with the enumeration of the sin of Negroes in the sense white people understood them – that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around white women. The piling of two homogeneous assertions sound as an evil assumption, Atticus ridicules the narrow-mindedness of social opinion of his time. The reiteration of the sentence “There is not a person in this court-room who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire” helps Finch to make his advocatory speech more effective and square. He wants to lay stress upon the fact that men in general are not saints, nobody in the hall is an angel, human weaknesses are inherent in every person. A cumulative conjunction “and” assists in creating a climax of Finch’s proof. The fact of Tom Robinson’s innocence is emphasized to the utmost. The indictment he is charged with (on) is a trifling matter every male being is subjected to. In the paragraph “I say guilt, gentlemen…” Finch exposes the real nature of Mayella Ewell’s claims. She committed not a crime but an offence unpardonable in her society. That’s the reason of her further action – the urgent desire to put away the daily reminder of her guilt. Finch’s proof is sustained by prolonged syntax. He is very thorough in explaining why it happened so. He follows with precision the logical chain of the girl’s consideration when he brings his listeners to the main point of his conclusion – “She must destroy the evidence of her offence”.

 

9. In the text we come across an interesting case of the ordinal numeral “first” used as a noun in the sentence. It’s a vivid example of the usage in individual speech the meaning of which is understandable only for its creator, in our case only for the family of the counsel for the defence. The device enables the writer to spare a good deal of description and to make the moment produce expressiveness.

 

10. The extract of H.Lee abounds in epithets as a peculiar stylistic device. Such examples of epithets as “a vivid and time-honoured code”, “a code so severe”, “the cynical confidence”, “the evil assumption” reveal Finch’s own attitude to the items he dwells on.

All these epithets betray the internals implied in the nature of the phenomena regarded. The latter had sprung up in antique times and preserved their unlawful force up to nowadays. You won’t find any officially recorded articles concerning this code in the chronicles of jurisdiction, they had been invented by the ignorant majority of a sanctimonious set of people, but they turned out to be so forceful that they exercised their influence on the actions and thoughts of modern men. In this way the epithets help to make an excursus into the history of human morals, and so Tom Robinson’s crime can be traced back to the absurdity of the past. “The cynical confidence” throws light upon the testimony of the witnesses, people of low caliber, whose evidence is a mere stuff. On the other hand, such combinations as “corroborative evidence”, “capital punishment”, “complicated facts”, “medical evidence” can’t be upon as suggesting epithets. Here we have simple attribute indicating at a denotative nature of the notion.

There is an interesting case of a simile in the text: “His voice has lost its aridity, its detachment, and he was talking to the jury as if they were folks on the post office corner”. Atticus’s identification of the jury with a common set of people isn’t caused by his disrespect of the persons of the consequence. It happens because of quite an opposite reason. Atticus knows perfectly well how to behave in his plight, but the importance of the matter he is going to win unnerves him, bewilders his steeled self-control. The device of a simile in this case renders an unusual plight of Atticus in the court. Atticus’s speech is very imagery. In order to make his defending speech sound logically and turn to be an adequate proof of the defendant’s innocence he resorts to metaphorical language which imparts his soliloquy the flavour of brightness and profound refinement.

Metaphors in his speech based on the collision of the direct meaning of the word with its contextual implication produce the effect of a high logical statement which contributes much to the potential salvation of the Negro fellow. When Atticus is determined to make a logical assertion concerning the equality of people he brings forward one genuine truth which is generated by the court system that is supposed to be just to everybody - for this court every human is equal, to erase all the distinction between people in the sense of their equality in a social community they live, Atticus takes polar conceptions and arranges them in parallel constructions following one another. A pauper, the stupid man and the ignorant one stand back from a Rockfeller, Einstein and a college president respectively at one and the same distance. The connotative meanings of metaphors present in Finch’s speech are expressive to the utmost. When speaking about the impulses motivating Mayella Ewell’s considerations Atticus derives some fact from the moral code, which are traced back to ancient times. He doesn’t say simply that a person …


Literature

 

1. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка (стилистка декодирования). - Л., 1990.

2. Гальперин И.Р. Стилистика английского языка (на английском языке). - М., 1981.

3. Кухаренко В.А. Интерпретация текста. - М., 1988.

4. Кухаренко В.А. Практикум по интерпретации текста. - М., 1987.

5. Практический курс английского языка: Для IV курса педагогических вузов. – Изд-е 3-е, перераб. и дополн. – М., 1991.

6. Утегенова Р.И. Методические указания и задания по филологическому анализу художественного текста для студентов 1У курса факультета английского языка казахского и русского отделений. - Алма-Ата, 1985.

7. Читайте больше дома. Сост. Гроссман Е.Я. - М., 1985.

 

 

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