THE EXPERIENCE OF “OTHERING” AND POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE: AN ANALYSIS OF HARPER LEE’S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

Abstract

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), written at the height of Civil Rights Movement in America, occupies an iconic status in the American cultural imaginary. Thematically revolving around the adventures of the nine-year old Scout, Jem, and Dill in their hometown, the racially-segregated Maycomb, and Atticus Finch’s defense of a Black man named Tom Robinson who is falsely accused of raping a White woman, the novel deals with the perennial questions of identity, its intersections with race, class and gender, and its implications on the individuals’ right to freedom and life. While the events of the novel are firmly rooted in the context of specific time and place, this paper argues that it profoundly resonates with the contemporary experience of racial, gender and class-based “othering”. The paper explores the ways in which the process of “othering” and marginalization manifests in the novel by delving into specific instances from the lives of characters like Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. Amidst these difficult experiences, the novel probes into the possibility of social justice that the power of law can uphold. This paper examines how Atticus Finch, both as a lawyer and a father, upholds law as a means of delivering social justice as well as advocates his belief in each individual’s judicious sensibility that allows him/her to be generous, tolerant and humane towards fellow beings. The proposed paper makes a case for To Kill a Mockingbird as a text of enduring value that exemplifies the futility of legal change if not accompanied by fundamental shift in prejudiced mindsets that sow the seeds of institutionalized “othering” and oppression of those different or opposite to oneselves.