"Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you" [Matthew 6:33]

Monday, February 27, 2012

To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee [Reading Log Entry # 3]



Part 1                                                         
               
Reflect - I was awe stricken when I discovered  that Boo Radley  had stepped out of his comfort zone during the night Jem and Scout were struggling from an attack. It was really out of my mind to anticipate that someone-like Boo Radley, who was a man who never got out of his haunted house , would eventually save the two kids from danger. What had happened the night when Jem and Scout were walking in the middle of darkness, was  a traumatic experience. I think, it was more than good enough for the Finch family to believe that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife, instead of suspecting that it was Jem who killed Bob for a purpose of self-defense.

Question - It's still a question for me on how Boo Radley knew that Bob Ewell was to assassinate Jem and Scout. Did he already know in the first place of what was going on the Finch family? Was he always on a watch out for Jem and Scout investigating that he was the main purpose why the two naughty kids were very interested to draw him out? And if he did not come out of nowhere to rescue the kids, could have Scout found a way out of the danger and run for help?

Connect - During my childhood days, I used to hang around with my buddies and seek for adventure without my parents' consent. We went out for ghost-hunting, river swimming, caroling and etc,. Like Scout, I was very inquisitive and sensitive as if I was a Psycho spectator. Even in matters that only adults exclusively do, I never let time to pass by without my tongue to slip off and and make a blasting interruption just to raise a question.
My mind kept on swirling around just to end up interrogating. Not until I aged like Jem when I realized that I was  a meddler.

Predict - I think that Boo Radley would have been Jem and Scout's friends after the incident. Scout would have obviously inquired more and more from her father about Boo's purpose of saving them. And about Bob Ewell's death, his family might have gotten mad and would have possibly made threats on the Finch family.




Part II

The summer when Scout was six and Jem was ten, they met Dill, a little boy who spent the summer with his aunt who lived next door to the Finches. Dill and Jem become obsessed with the idea of making Boo Radley, the neighborhood recluse, come out of his home. They go through plan after plan,but nothing drew him out. However, these brushed with the neighborhood ghost resulted  in a tentative friendship over time and soon the Finch children realized that Boo Radley deserved to live in peace. So they left him alone.

Scout and Jem's God-like father, Atticus, was a respected and understanding lawyer in small Maycomd County. When he took on a case that pitted innocent, black Tom Robinson against two dishonest white people, Atticus knew hat he will lose, but he had to defend the man or he could not have lived himself. The case was the biggest thing to hit Maycomd County in years and it turned the whole town against Atticus, or so it seemed. Scout and Jem were forced to bear the slurs against their father and watched with shock and disillusionment as their fellow town people convicted and obliviously innocent man because of his race. The only real enemy that Atticus made during the case was Bob Ewell, the trashy white man who accused Tom Robinson of raping his daughter. Despite Ewell's vow to avenge himself against Aticus, Atticus did not view Ewell as any real threat.

Tom Robinson was sent to a work prison to wait another trial, but before Atticus can get him to court again, Tom was shot for trying to escape the prison. It seemed that the case was finally over and life returned to normal until Halloween night. On the way home from a pageant, Bob Ewell attacked Jem and Scout on the darkness. After Jem's arm was bad badly broken, their ghostly neighbor , Boo Radley, rescued Scout and her brother. In order to protect Boo Radley's privacy, the sheriff decided to that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife while he was struggling with Jem. Radley returned home never to be seen again.

Through the events of those years, Scout had learned that no matter their differences or peculiarities, the people of the world and of Maycomb County were all people. No one is lesser or better that any one else because they are all people. She had realized that once you had gotten to know them, most people were good and kind no matter what they seem had seemed  like on the outside.

* In my outside world, the experience of exploring and adventure connect me into a life of scraping slowly the seal of innocence and blot immaturity out of my mindset. This story brings out my teenage espionage into a deep nostalgia which somehow leads me into another pace of discovering the value of life as an individual.This book has taught me lessons that emphasize tolerance and decry prejudice. Nevertheless, as a child living with countless circumstances around, this world would greatly alter perceptions and sensitivity as ages pass by.

No comments:

Post a Comment