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Analyzing Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

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Analyzing Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird'
Title:Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
Author(s):Laurie Champion
Publication Details:Explicator 61.4 (Summer 2003): p234-236.
Source:Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale, 2005. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type:Critical essay
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

[(essay date summer 2003) In the following essay, Champion explicates the symbolic use of the terms "right" and "left" in To Kill a Mockingbird, arguing that "right" in the novel symbolizes virtue, while "left" symbolizes iniquity.]
Throughout Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, besides the ordinary connotations of "right" and "left" as opposing spatial directions, the terms also work on a subtler …show more content…
She says that if Mayella's "right eye was blacked and she was beaten mostly on the right side of the face, it would tend to show that a left-handed person did it. [...] But Tom Robinson could easily be left-handed, too. Like Mr. Heck Tate, I imagined a person facing me, went through a swift mental pantomime, and concluded that he might have held her with his right hand and pounded her with his left" (189). Again, the words "right" and "left" are repeated. Scout also uses the word "facing," a directional word that represents the jury Tom faces and the truth the jury refuses to …show more content…
Contrarily, the rabid dog, Mayella, and Bob represent moral inequity. The dog's "left" legs are healthy; Mayella's "left" eye is healthy; and Bob is "left" handed. The rabid dog presents a physical threat to Maycomb County, but Mayella and Bob present a social threat--the perpetuation of racism. Atticus's virtue only enables him to eliminate the physical threat. That the jury convicts Tom in the end signals that Atticus loses his battle against racism.

Works Cited
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1960.

Source Citation
Champion, Laurie. "Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird." Explicator 61.4 (Summer 2003): 234-236. Rpt. In Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Jan. 2011. Document
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