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摘 要

《杀死一只知更鸟》是美国女作家哈珀·李的半自传性作品。小说以儿童视角讲述了梅科姆镇上九岁的小女孩琼·路易·斯库特·芬奇的成长故事。小说是美国南方生活的真实写照，也是作家对种族和道德问题的再审视。现有的研究大都从种族主义偏见、成长教育和女性地位等角度对该小说进行了分析。然而，对于小女孩斯库特的种族观研究却不多见。本论文以大卫·纽曼的种族主义理论为依据，对《杀死一只知更鸟》进行剖析，分析斯库特的种族观以及影响其种族观形成的因素，探讨美国美国社会种族问题。

除去引言和结论以外，本论文包含三个章节。第一章分析了小镇的社会环境、白人和黑人之间的种族隔离、以及当时盛行的价值观以探究社会大环境对斯库特种族观形成的影响。第二章从家庭教育入手，选取父亲阿蒂克斯和姑姑亚历山德拉为代表分析家庭教育对斯库特种族观形成的作用。第三章是重点分析学校生活对斯库特的种族观形成的影响。斯库特与其同学、老师的交流也在她种族观建立的过程中起到不可忽视的作用。通过对小说的分析，可以看出美国种族主义的影响体现在社会生活的各个方面，对儿童种族观的形成更是起到了不可忽视的重要作用。

关键词：种族观，《杀死一只知更鸟》，哈珀·李

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract iii

摘要 iii

Introduction 3

Nelle Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird 3

Literature Review 3

Martin N. Marger’s Racial Theory 3

Thesis Structure 3

Chapter One A Clear-cut Racial Environment 3

1.1 Racial society of Maycomb 3

1.2 The blacks under Racial Gaze 3

Chapter Two A Conflicting Family Vision 3

2.1 Non-confining Guidance of Atticus 3

2.2 A Stereotyped Racial Perception of Aunt Alexandra 3

Chapter Three A Constraining School Education 3

3.1 Racial Beliefs of the School Teachers 3

3.2 Racial Interactions with the other Children 3

Conclusion 3

Works Cited 3

Introduction

Nelle Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a semi-autobiographical novel of the American female writer Harper Lee. Often seen as a children’s coming-of-age saga (Huston 176) or as a commentary on racial injustice in the South in the 1930s (Richardson 362), the novel became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later, in 1962, made into an Academy Award-winning film, which starred Gregory Peck. Now it’s still a classic, required reading for many middle and high school students in America. The novel’s name implies a symbolic meaning and several characters can be interpreted as “mockingbird”. The growing-up tale of a white girl, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, of a sleepy Southern town Maycomb, Alabama, is interwoven with experiences of the issues of racism, prejudice, innocence, compassion and hypocrisy during the Depression in 1930s. The novel displays the real picture of American southern life and calls for the reflection on the moral regression in the American southern society.

Nelle Harper Lee, born in April, 1926, in Alabama grew up in an ordinary family. Her mother, named Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, was a housewife while her father, called Amasa Coleman Lee, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer in the Alabama state legislature. She began writing at seven years old and developed a habit of writing. In university, Lee wrote columns, reviews and satires for the university newspaper and literary publications. Her first job in New York was an airline reservations clerk. While working, she continued to write essays and short stories, but none of them was published. However, she was encouraged by an agent to expand one of the stories into a novel.

She quitted her job and started writing the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and finished the draft in1957. She then revised her novel for the next two and a half years and it was published on July 11, 1960. It gained a big success. Since then, To Kill a Mockingbird was sold 500,000 copies and it came to be translated into more than 40 languages. Meanwhile, it was granted the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The book was also granted the Bestseller’s Paperback Award in 1962, with the sale of 4,500,000 copies. Later it was made into a film in 1962 and the main actor Gregory Peck was awarded an Academy Award for playing the lawyer Atticus Finch.

After the novel got a great success, Lee did not continue her writing career. Instead, she returned to her hometown Monroeville with her sister Alice, avoiding interviews. Later in July, 2015, Lee published another novel, Go Set a Watchman, which tells what happened in Maycomb in the 1950s. The publication of this novel has raised a series of controversies on its content. On 19^th, 2016, this lovely lady passed away in her hometown.

The story To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated by an adult looking back upon a three-year period of her childhood through the perspective of a nine-year-old girl, nicknamed Scout, who recounts various encounters with people in her town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill are fascinated with a recluse called “Boo,” Arthur Radley, who lives down the street, and with whom the children develop a tacit relationship. Under the non-confining guidance of their father, Atticus Finch, and African-American housekeeper, Calpurnia, the children interact with their neighbors, the independent and open-minded Maudie Atkinson, the gossiping Stephanie Crawford, and the cantankerous yet fiercely brave Mrs. Dubose. Scout, Jem, and Dill are exposed to society’s racism and other injustices through the trial of Tom Robinson, an African-American man who has been wrongly accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Atticus, the lawyer who defends Tom Robinson, faces significant disapprobation from the bigoted people of Maycomb, including his sibling sister—the children’s Aunt Alexandra, who comes to live with them during the period of the trial—for his concerted attempt to secure an acquittal. Although Tom is convicted and then killed by guards in the prison while awaiting his appeal, Bob Ewell—Mayella’s brutally abusive father who has forced her falsely to accuse Tom—seek revenge against Atticus by attempting to murder Scout and Jem. Arthur Radley saves the children, accidentally killing Bob Ewell with a kitchen knife. Atticus eventually agrees with the sheriff to deem it a self-inflicted wound, so as not to draw Boo aversely into the limelight.

Even though the novel deals with serious issues, Harper Lee chooses to tell it from the eyes of a child. The setting and several of the characters are based on Lee’s early life—Finch was the maiden name of her mother, and the character of Dill was drawn from a childhood friend. The trial itself is similar to the infamous “Scottboro Trial,” in which the charge was rape. In both events, the defendants were African-American men and the accusers white women. Scout describes the story in her own language, but she also analyzes people and their actions from the viewpoint of a mature person. She shows that white people’s exploitation and oppression causes the black’s miserable situation. As Scout’s narration goes on, readers can realize that she will never kill a mockingbird or become a racist.

Literature Review

During the years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird has got a lot of comments and reviews in different newspapers and magazines since 1963. There are several published books and more than 130 papers about the novel. Generally, critics focus on the following four aspects.

Firstly, scholars concentrate on racial issues reflected in the novel, mostly with the theory of post-colonialism. In “Panoptism and the Use of ‘the Other’ in To Kill a Mockingbird”, Rebecca H. Best examines Scout and Jem’s search for identity and the obstacles to it through the theory of Foucault elaborated in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. The sense of the other is apparent in the social development of Scout and Jem, in class, race, and gender prejudices. The blacks, the so-called lower class families like the Cunninghams and the Ewells, their neighbor Arthur Radley—these Others interact with the two children and make them learn different lessons (541-552).

Secondly, many scholars are interested in the structure and writing styles of the novel. Kristen B. Proehl compares Lee’s writing styles and portrayals of tomboy/sissy dyad to female writer Carson McCullers. Kristen B. believes that McCullers influences To Kill a Mockingbird and its portrayal of the intersections of race, sexuality, and childhood in the small-town South. Namely, Lee’s tomboy/sissy dyad, Scout and her friend Dill, seem to mirror Frankie Addams and John Henry of The Member of the Wedding (128-133). Besides, a bi-circular structure is introduced to analyze the novel by Liu Guozhi and Wang Na in their essay “On the Bi-Circular Structure in To Kill a Mockingbird”. They examine the circular narrative structures embodied respectively in the stories of Tom Robinson and Arthur Radley in the novel. He gives a comparative and contrastive analysis and claims that the relationship between Arthur’s and Tom’s stories is that of supplementing and being supplemented, containing and being contained. The skillful mastery of bi-circular structure enables Lee to construct subtle narrative structures and thus shows her insight into the meaning in routine life and truth in contradictions (130-136).

The third aspect mainly focuses on education and growth issues. Rui Yuping and Fan Yi have studied the growing-up theme of the novel. They believe that the novel demonstrates three types of family ethical norm and education: caring and guiding (the Finch family), authoritarian (the Radley family) and uninvolved (Dill’s family). Through the growing-up stories of a number of adolescents in the South of America, the novel presents their growing pains and the effects that the social and family values cast on them, and traces the course of their psychological and moral development (119-129).

Last but not least, the narrative method has been studied carefully using different theories. The novel is narrated by the 9-year-old Scout, so it becomes a good text to study children’s cognitive world. A domestic scholar Yuan Yingzhe analyzes the reasons and effects of the usage of children’s perspective in the novel in her paper. In her opinion, this unique narrative technique is the expression of one’s inventive mind and is one of the most important reasons why the novel can touch readers’ hearts, and this technique can help people better understand the author’s good intentions (118-119).

This thesis is going to take a deep look into the racial perceptions of children. Scout Finch, the protagonist of the novel, is a typical representative of the young generation. By studying her racial perceptions and the influencing factors contributing to her racial perceptions, this thesis explores the racial complexities in the southern American society.

Martin N. Marger’s Racial Theory

Before the study of racism, an accurate definition of race is desperately needed. The idea of race has a long history, tracing as far back as ancient civilizations. In the modern world, specifically in the last two centuries, the notion has taken on real significance and fundamentally affected human relations. It has been used to describe a wide variety of human categories, including people of a particular skin color (the Caucasian “race”), religion (the Jewish “race”), nationality (the British “race”), and even the entire human species (the human “race”). But for Marger, “none of these applications is accurate and meaningful from a social scientific standpoint.” (12) He believes that “it is impossible to do justice to the controversies surrounding the notion of race in a few pages” (12). As a biological notion, race is “a population of humans classified on the basis of certain hereditary characteristics that differentiate them from other human groups” (13).

About the ideology of racism, Marger has a more concrete and specified definition. He structures racism around three basic ideas:

• Humans are divided naturally into different physical types.

• Such physical traits as people display are intrinsically related to their culture, personality, and intelligence.

• The differences among groups are innate, not subject to change, and on the basis of their genetic inheritance, some groups are innately superior to others. (17)

Firstly, humans are divided into different types according to physical discrepancies like colors of skin or height. This process takes place naturally. Then, certain non-physical traits including social behaviors, culture, personality and intelligence are linked to a type. Eventually, some groups are innately assumed superior to others.

In sum, racism is the belief that humans are subdivided into distinct hereditary groups that are innately different in their social behavior and mental capacities and that can therefore be ranked as superior or inferior. (Marger 18)

Racial prejudice and racial discrimination are techniques and direct expressions of racism. Marger defines prejudice as “the attitudinal dimension of ethnic antagonism” (77). Prejudices are categorical, inflexible, negative attitudes toward ethnic groups, based on simplistic and exaggerated group images called stereotypes. And discrimination is “the behavioral dimension and involves actions designed to sustain ethnic inequality” (77). Discrimination takes various forms, ranging from derogation to physical attack and even extermination.

In To Kill a Mocking Bird, racism is the basic theme of the second part. In Maycomb, a southern town of America, the blacks are under racial segregation in living areas, social activities, etc. The Finch family used to be a slave owner of a plantation, where the blacks are under racial gaze of their owners. From Scout’s view, these social phenomena seem ridiculous and injustice. She feels sorry for Tom, respect the blacks, and care about their situation. However, growing up in the Southern environment, Scout develops racism to some extent, say, her ignorance of her house keeper. All these behaviors can be plainly explained by studying the circumstances of the town, her family and her school life.

Thesis Structure

This thesis will be divided into three chapters. The first chapter will focus on the racial environment of Maycomb and the blacks’ lives under the racial gaze of the white. In this unenlightened southern town in the 1930s, racism still occupies the majority’s minds. Therefore, the blacks, as a race and also human beings, live a hard life. In the second chapter, the racial perceptions of the family, represented by father Atticus and Aunt Alexandra, will be carefully analyzed. These two families play an important role in shaping Scout’s racial perceptions. Atticus, as a lawyer, is open-minded to the blacks and tries his best to help Tom Robinson with his case, which revolves racism; Aunt Alexandra, a typical lady of a traditional family, sticks to her prejudice against the black. Both their thoughts and behaviors cast a shadow on Scout. The third chapter deals with racism interwoven with the school education. Everyone in Maycomb is a politician, to some extent. They take an active involvement in social events and are well acquainted with every resident in the town. Before the trial of Tom Robinson, Scout is surrounded by comments and complains of her father’s act of defending a nigger. Among them, Cecil and her teacher Mr. Gates impact her points of view most. Based on the textual analysis, this thesis will come to the conclusion that the influence of racism is diminishing but it will last for a long time.

Chapter One A Clear-cut Racial Environment

America has a long history of racism and racial discrimination which probably came into being ever since slavery trade started at the end of the 15th century. Though the slavery had been abolished theoretically in the acts after civil war, the colored people still suffered from racial segregation and racial discrimination. In the 1930s, the blacks suffered a lot because of the racial environment of the town.

1.1 Racial society of Maycomb

Among Marger’s basic ideas to define racism, the first one is that “humans are divided naturally into different physical types” (17). People tend to come into contact with people of a kind or with whom they have common traits. With time going on, people of a kind live close to each other and build up a community and then develop a communal culture. These different racial communities are not likely to interact with each other on a regular basis. In this way, racial segregation extends to a large scale.

Racial segregation is a form of racial discrimination and racial prejudice. Under the guidance of this kind of thinking, the racial majorities develop a stereotype about the racial minorities, linking them with implicit negative labels like poverty, criminal and illiteracy.

Maycomb town, an “island community” (34) according Malcolm Gladwell, has a clear-cut segregation in residential space.

Young Jem, Scout’s elder brother, figures out that in Maycomb, “There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes.” (229) He sees through the nature of the races in his town even at a tender age.

In Maycomb, residents scatter in several residential chunks: ordinary people gather in the downtown area; those who are less decent pack near the town dump; the blacks dwell in the little settlements beyond the town dump. A special case in Maycomb is that a family live behind the town garbage dump which is separated from neither the white majorities nor the blacks. That is the Ewells. They live behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin.

The racial gap between the white and the black is so wide that the shared religion wouldn’t bring them closer. In Maycomb, people of different colors go to different churches. The whites attend their own church and the blacks have a church called First Purchase Church.

First Purchase African M.E. Church was in the Quarters outside the southern town limits, across the old sawmill tracks. It was an ancient paint-peeled frame building, the only church in Maycomb with a steeple and bell, called First Purchase because it was paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves. (120)

The blacks are not allowed in the whites’ churches, so they have bought their own church with their earnings after they get freedom. However, they are not totally in possession of the church. The whites get access to First Purchase Church and they gamble in this holy place for the blacks—“white men gambled in it on weekdays” (120). The white men in the town wouldn’t hold such unhallowed activities in their own church. It’s acceptable for them to gamble in a nigger’s church but the blacks cannot drive them away.

Marger points out that some groups are innately superior to others on the basis of their genetic inheritance. It’s in the whites’ bones that their kind is superior to the blacks so that they oppress the blacks to keep their racial advantages. They drive the blacks away from the centre of the town to the far end of the dump; they belittle the black’s church by gambling in it; they accuse Tom of a crime that he has not committed.

In such a backward, unenlightened town as Maycomb, a few white citizens look at the blacks as their fellow human beings. However, few have the gut or courage to stand against the whole town and take direct moves. Mr. Dolphus Raymond is an exception. Hilary Lochte insists that Dolphus Raymond and Atticus “serve either as silent, but disapproving witnesses to racism or subtle subversives to it” (98). Here, Mr. Dolphus is believed to be a “subtle subversive” to racism. Truly, he is a radical man to most people in Maycomb.

Mr. Dolphus is from a real old family to boot and owns one side of the river bank. He’s no trash but he lives a life that seems trash-like to other residents: Living by himself way down near the county line, he gets married with a colored woman and has all sorts of mixed children. He explains his lifestyle this way: “they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.” (203)

While waiting for the trial, the white occupy the centre square and streets while the blacks stay in the corner. Mr. Dolphus, as a white man of an old family of the town, chooses the side of the blacks.

In a far corner of the square, the Negroes sat quietly in the sun, dining on sardines, crackers, and the more vivid flavors of Nehi Cola. Mr. Dolphus Raymond sat with them. (163)

The miscegenation of white Mr. Dolphus with a black woman leads to prejudice and disgust from people of his kind to him. Fully aware of this fact, he would rather stay with the blacks, because at least they don’t jeer at him.

People hold hostile attitude towards Mr. Dolphus, and his mixed children also face an awkward situation for their special identity. Jem points out to Scout that these children “don’t belong anywhere. Colored folks won’t have ’em because they’re half white; white folks won’t have ’em cause they’re colored, so they’re just in-betweens, don’t belong anywhere.” (163)

The folks’ comments and rumors of Mr. Dolphus have a marked impact on little Scout. She knows him long before she really encounters him. Through what others say about him, she builds up his image and believes in it instead of getting to the truth through her firsthand experience. She remains skeptical about him even after he opens his heart to her: “I had a feeling that I shouldn’t be here listening to this sinful man who had mixed children and didn’t care who knew it, but he was fascinating.” (203)

Scout’s attitude towards Mr. Dolphus in the beginning reflects the influence of the racial environment on her. She never comes into contact with him but hears a lot of negative comments about him. According to these opinions, she forms an image of him and sets her viewpoints about him.

So is the racism of the town. Before her birth, slavery was abolished in America so she doesn’t see how the blacks were discriminated and abused in plants. However, as the town still embraces racism, she is exposed to social currents where the whites treat the blacks with scorn. Day by day, she is affected by this social atmosphere without being conscious of that.

To some extent, Scout’s ignorance of her nurse Calpurnia is reflective of the influence of racism in the town. Calpurnia is not a live-in maid. She has a home of her own, children of her own, and possibly a husband. But Scout doesn’t know her family, her age, her birthday, or her life story, let alone her happiness and sorrow. This ignorance indicts Scout’ racist thought deep in her mind, which she herself perceives later. She realizes that “Zeebo was Calpurnia’s eldest son. If I had ever thought about it, I would have known that Calpurnia was of mature years—Zeebo had half-grown children—but then I had never thought about it.” (127)

Growing up in a town where racism prevails, Scout picks up racist thoughts unknowingly and builds up stereotypes exposed to rumors day by day. But the experience and interaction with the blacks of the town impresses her with their decent lifestyles and dignified behaviors. This more favorable impression shortens the distance between her and the blacks.

1.2 The blacks under Racial Gaze

Finch’s Landing, the homestead of the Finch family, holds the spoor of slavery. Simon Finch, Scout’s ancestor, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. People of the Landing made their living from planting cotton.

In slavery times, slave owners often built a high platform to supervise his slaves or for other purposed. As a slave owner, Simon designed his homestead deliberately for gazing purpose. In Finch’s Landing, Scout is curious about a widow’s walk on the roof without any widow walking there. She finds out that it’s a place from which “Simon oversaw his overseer, watched the river-boats, and gazed into the lives of surrounding landholders” (85).

In the long history of human beings, looking or seeing is a very important way to cognize the surrounding world comprehensively, which can also help to establish different social positions.

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