Atticus - III
The words, the sentiments, the emotions were always there, somewhere lurking at the back of the mind. But, in today's distracting world, it is difficult to reach out to things you love the most - words, feelings, memories, life in having the sense of 'being'. I was caught on in a bit of the cricket World Cup, especially among two of my favourite cricket teams - England and Ireland. My predictions coming right in World Cups continues - Ireland does indeed beat Pakistan, for almost all people a bolt from the blue, not for me.
There's not a greater pleasure in this life, when you pick up a book and you get a solid hunch that this is going to be a great book. And most of the great books have it, just as most of the great films have that in their teasers and trailers. But, the hunch of a book goes subtler, and often I am at great pains to discover the connection. Sometimes, the binding, the paper used in the book, the font style and size, the margins and indentations, everything so much jells in with the book itself - and then you not only love a book, but you love the book itself. You cannot read that same novel or story now in any other version - that book has become a part of the atmosphere of the story in that book. Everything! Right from the author's foreword to the critics' comments to the notes at the end of the book - everything only serves to make a perfect whole, to attain the apex.
Though I have had never a wrong hunch, I have had no positive hunches sometimes. A case in point - To Kill A Mockingbird. I still remember buying it from a small bookshop that I sometimes used to go to in Vashi (Navi Mumbai). I have spent most of my life honing myself on the classics - it was time to get out in the open, and have a worldview, to experiment, to rebel. The twentieth century's Mockingbird was a beginning. I only started with it because I had seen the trailer of the film based on it - and it looked very, very interesting. More than the Atticus himself, who of course interested me a great deal and is of course one of the real heroes for me, it interested me to get at how Lee did succeed in bringing a character such as Atticus out. It's so difficult!
The man does not have a tragic backdrop to his life! He's a man who has left off guns, without any style, cannot play football, is a regular office-goer kinda fellow, and he just sticks to his guns, and that's in fact all the story in the book. How does a man keep on sticking to his guns, holding his head high or low with shame - depending on what era's reader you are (for, in today's politically correct world, most readers would root for the former, but it would have been a much changed scenario a hundred years back). And yet, in some way, the story turns magical.
I attribute it to the children, especially Scout. Atticus himself is strongly brought about, whenever so, only through his interactions with the children. Since Atticus is not at all the type of a man who would say much for himself, it is only through what he advises or admonishes Scout and Jem time to time, the distant hints given to his character whenever he talks to Miss Maudy or Calpurnia, or episodes like the mad dog or Miss Dubose one, where the children, and the readers, have a sudden spurt of information about Atticus through others (Heck Tate, Maudy, Cal) or through the sentiments that they feel their father is generating through his actions all throughout. Scout still does not understand why Mr. Cunningham backed out with the mob when she recognised him, but she will in future, and Jem half does now only. For Dill, it's just witness to a hallowed scene and company! Although it's Cal who admonishes Scout to let the boy eat even the tablecloth if he wants to since he's the guest, it feels that it's Atticus - you have his way of living right there, in front of you. It brings about his focus on his tolerance, very sharply. The man would not hurt anyone deliberately, but he won't let anyone be at the same time, when it comes under his purview - he persistently defends Tim Robinson. And the point is that he himself is under no illusions of winning the specific case - but he knows that fighting the case in itself is a building a case for the future Robinsons, for a world where strange things like a man's way of living or his color of living do not form the criteria, for an Arthur Radley to live as he wants to, for a world of respect to each other, and to oneself. You can't fight the teacher and the new order of things - it's not worth it - but you can secretly contravene the system; Scout can keep on reading 'the wrong way'. You don't care if the whole of the world thinks you as wrong, but when to hold up your head it's important to do something, you have got to do it. A life led one's own way is any day better than a living death.
I will not contine now with Atticus in the near future here. I said, I will talk about the film as well, but something says me to stop for a while, and better think about him more. But, otherwise, my diligence with blogging this month will continue.
There's not a greater pleasure in this life, when you pick up a book and you get a solid hunch that this is going to be a great book. And most of the great books have it, just as most of the great films have that in their teasers and trailers. But, the hunch of a book goes subtler, and often I am at great pains to discover the connection. Sometimes, the binding, the paper used in the book, the font style and size, the margins and indentations, everything so much jells in with the book itself - and then you not only love a book, but you love the book itself. You cannot read that same novel or story now in any other version - that book has become a part of the atmosphere of the story in that book. Everything! Right from the author's foreword to the critics' comments to the notes at the end of the book - everything only serves to make a perfect whole, to attain the apex.
Though I have had never a wrong hunch, I have had no positive hunches sometimes. A case in point - To Kill A Mockingbird. I still remember buying it from a small bookshop that I sometimes used to go to in Vashi (Navi Mumbai). I have spent most of my life honing myself on the classics - it was time to get out in the open, and have a worldview, to experiment, to rebel. The twentieth century's Mockingbird was a beginning. I only started with it because I had seen the trailer of the film based on it - and it looked very, very interesting. More than the Atticus himself, who of course interested me a great deal and is of course one of the real heroes for me, it interested me to get at how Lee did succeed in bringing a character such as Atticus out. It's so difficult!
The man does not have a tragic backdrop to his life! He's a man who has left off guns, without any style, cannot play football, is a regular office-goer kinda fellow, and he just sticks to his guns, and that's in fact all the story in the book. How does a man keep on sticking to his guns, holding his head high or low with shame - depending on what era's reader you are (for, in today's politically correct world, most readers would root for the former, but it would have been a much changed scenario a hundred years back). And yet, in some way, the story turns magical.
I attribute it to the children, especially Scout. Atticus himself is strongly brought about, whenever so, only through his interactions with the children. Since Atticus is not at all the type of a man who would say much for himself, it is only through what he advises or admonishes Scout and Jem time to time, the distant hints given to his character whenever he talks to Miss Maudy or Calpurnia, or episodes like the mad dog or Miss Dubose one, where the children, and the readers, have a sudden spurt of information about Atticus through others (Heck Tate, Maudy, Cal) or through the sentiments that they feel their father is generating through his actions all throughout. Scout still does not understand why Mr. Cunningham backed out with the mob when she recognised him, but she will in future, and Jem half does now only. For Dill, it's just witness to a hallowed scene and company! Although it's Cal who admonishes Scout to let the boy eat even the tablecloth if he wants to since he's the guest, it feels that it's Atticus - you have his way of living right there, in front of you. It brings about his focus on his tolerance, very sharply. The man would not hurt anyone deliberately, but he won't let anyone be at the same time, when it comes under his purview - he persistently defends Tim Robinson. And the point is that he himself is under no illusions of winning the specific case - but he knows that fighting the case in itself is a building a case for the future Robinsons, for a world where strange things like a man's way of living or his color of living do not form the criteria, for an Arthur Radley to live as he wants to, for a world of respect to each other, and to oneself. You can't fight the teacher and the new order of things - it's not worth it - but you can secretly contravene the system; Scout can keep on reading 'the wrong way'. You don't care if the whole of the world thinks you as wrong, but when to hold up your head it's important to do something, you have got to do it. A life led one's own way is any day better than a living death.
I will not contine now with Atticus in the near future here. I said, I will talk about the film as well, but something says me to stop for a while, and better think about him more. But, otherwise, my diligence with blogging this month will continue.
Labels: literature
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