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The analysis of the climax of the novel “To kill a mockingbird” by Harper Lee.
The novel “To kill a mockingbird” is written realistic style. The book gives a vivid portrayal of a court as Harper Lee studied law and she knew about it very well. Though the given extract is to depict the arid atmosphere of a trial, there is an emotional filling of the situation. All this due to the fact that the events are described by a child, not a simple child, but a lawyer’s one.
Jean Louise, aged seven, is very alert and smart beyond her years. She tells about rather usual case for such Southern States as Alabama – charging a Negro, Tom Robinson in this particular case, in raping a white girl. Jean’s father, Atticus Finch, turned out to be the only lawyer, who agreed to defend Tom Robinson, as the rest were, evidently, afraid of threats and prosecution in those not so easy times.
In the very beginning of her narration, Jean describes Atticus’s usual behavior in front of the jury: “…was speaking easily, with the kind of the detachment he used when dictated a letter”, then she uses an interesting metaphor – “Atticus wasn’t a thunderer”, which prepares the reader to further changes.
Some changes become clearly seen, indeed. The lawyer begins to unbutton his collar and loosen his tie; it’s nonsense for such conservative person. And Atticus’s daughter is very impressed by these changes, so she gives a detailed description of his every movement, every glance, as all this was stamped on her memory clearly. While describing these “firsts”, as she called them, she uses different stylistic devices to emphasize the effect of what she has seen. Her narration is especially rich in similes: “…this was equivalent of him standing before us stark naked”; “… he was talking to the jury as if they were folks on the post office corner”. The similes help to understand the degree of her surprise as she had never seen him doing such things “before or since, in public or in private” – this fact stands for his being nervous as he is sure he will lose the case, so he must try to find some way to influence jury’s minds.
So, changes can be noticed not only in Atticus’s behavior, but also in his speech. After the “firsts” it becomes less formal, it becomes a real argumentative discourse – emotional and logic at the same time. On the one hand he uses different clichés (“to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt”; “evidence has been called into serious cross-examination”), special words peculiar to the lawyer’s vocabulary (defendant, circumstantial evidence, to testify, assumption, capital charge). On the other hand there are some stylistic devices in his speech – metaphors (“minute sifting”, “cynical confidence”); lots of repetitions – in particular anadiplosis (“…she had done it in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her”); anaphora and ordinary repetition (“…on the assumption – the evil assumption – that all Negroes lie; that all Negro man are basically immoral beings…”); constant repetition of pairs of words – black\white, truth\lie; similes (“…she was no child hiding stolen contraband”, “a lie as black as Tom Robinson’s skin”). The mixture of these means together with peculiarities of the oratorical style – direct address (gentlemen, jury); rhetorical questions (“What was the evidence of her offence?”, “Was did she do?”); quotations – shows that Atticus tried to appeal to jury’s logic. He did his best both as a human being and as a professional lawyer, and all he could do more – hope and wait for the verdict.
The state of expectation is kept in readers by absence of the description of the jury’s reaction to Atticus’s words and by means of suspense: it wasn’t enough for the narrator to tell that the verdict was not in Tom Robinson’s favour, she mentioned each “guilty”. Also Jean compares suspension points which stand for pauses with stabs, stabs in hearts of the defendant litigant.
Though the climax is over, the denouement is also strained as it depicts the scene when everybody who cares the verdict pays tribute of respect to that man: “all around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet”. This detail was also rather important in the child’s eyes.