Response to Gladwell

I had mixed feelings after reading Gladwell’s article from the New Yorker. Mostly, I feel defensive of Atticus and of his role in the novel. Gladwell criticizes Atticus and the novel for not doing more to fight racial inequalities and tensions during the trial and argues that To Kill a Mockingird tells us primarily “about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.” While this may be true, I think another large part of the novel is Atticus’s character, and this character would have been drastically different had he acted differently at the trial. While Gladwell seems to view it as a negative characteristic that “Once again, he [Atticus] puts personal ties first,” I think this is one of the most notable and remarkable things about his character. This is a large reason behind his relationship with Scout and Jem and his respectability in the town. If Atticus was in fact “brimming with rage” in the courtroom like Gladwell suggests, that one action would negate and alter the entire perception of his character that Lee has presented up to that point. I believe that where Gladwell’s argument falls through is in understanding that Lee never intended for Atticus to be a civil-rights hero – she intended for the trial and the civil-rights conflict to be one of the many parts of Atticus’s character and personality. The trial is just one way in which the reader and Atticus’s children learn about him and how to treat people, in the same way that they learn through his interactions with Mrs. Dubose and Boo Radley. If we hold Atticus up to the standard of a civil-rights hero of course he will fall short, but that is not what he is intended to be.
I also think that making Atticus this kind of hero would take him out of the context of the novel. While this is what would be necessary to redirect the story into a more civil-rights oriented plotline, by broadening the context and losing the “profound localism” that Gladwell mentions, a lot of the beauty of the town and the community that Lee created would be lost. Overall, if Atticus was the hero that Gladwell wanted him to be, many other aspects of Lee’s novel that are desirable would have to be altered or lost.