Unless you put on a man's shoes and walk around like him, you can never really get to know a man.
This book has the highest borrowing rate in American libraries, it is from the perspective of a child, without any preset position, it seems to record the life of a child, but on the other hand, it exposes the obscure life seen from the child's point of view.
The book is called Killing a Mockingbird, and the Robin doesn't steal food and destroy crops, it just sings to people every day.
"It doesn't matter how many bluebirds you shoot, but remember that killing a mockingbird is a sin. Because robins only sing to us, they don't do anything bad. ”
[01]
The book is written in two main parts, the first part is the strange man Radley:
Blame the neighbor Radley for being insane and stabbing scissors into his father's leg. So he was locked up, and since then the Radley family has been living in seclusion, and all kinds of rumors have spread in the town:
People say there is a ghost living in Radley's house. It is said that he would sneak out at night and sneak into people's windows.
The azalea was frozen by the cold current, and it must have been him who blew a breath on the flower;
All the petty theft and other things in the town, he can't get rid of it;
There are several walnut trees in the yard of the Radley family, and no one dares to touch the walnuts, because the radley family's walnuts will die when they eat them;
If someone had hit a baseball into the yard of Radley's house, no one would have thought of taking it back, and it would have been lost.
Even the rumors about his appearance are like this:
[According to the footprints, the strange man is about six and a half feet tall; he eats squirrels raw, and he can catch cats, so his hands are always bloodied—if you eat animals raw, the blood stains will never be washed off.] He had a long jagged scar on his face, his teeth were yellow and rotten, his eyeballs bulged outwards, and he drooled all day long. 】
The heroine and her little friends often play various small scripts together, mocking Radley. But Radley was kind, and not only did he not blame them, but he secretly liked and helped them:
He placed small gifts in a large tree hole in the yard
He mended pants for the voyeuristic little kid who mocked him
He secretly draped blankets over his brothers and sisters frozen in the snow
He did this secretly...
And the last time, when the heroine brothers and sisters were attacked by bad people, he stepped forward and saved the brothers and sisters, this time the brothers and sisters saw the strange man Radley who occupied the childhood imagination. This beautiful robin was not the rumored face at all—his lips were slightly open, revealing a shy smile.
In fact, the strange man Radley who makes "us" feel frightened is a shy, gentle, kind, and unkind big brother of the neighbor's tall, thin, white neighbor.
[02]
The second part was triggered by black cases.
Tom, a black man, was accused of raping a Caucasian woman, and the heroine's father defended him as a lawyer. As a result, the heroine's family was insulted and ridiculed from the outside world.
In the courtroom, the heroine's father did his best to analyze every small piece of evidence, and did his best to defend Tom, so that everyone in the courtroom was moved, and the courtroom that day was also unusually crowded, and few people left, although the plaintiff's defense was full of loopholes, although the truth of the matter was known to everyone, but in the end it was two heavy words "guilty".
In fact, from the moment the black man was indicted, it was doomed to tragedy, even if the whole town and the whole court knew that he was innocent. Even if everyone knew that the negro was a polite, helpful guy, and then an innocent man died like this, without making any mistakes, just because of the color of his skin.
Although he was kind and industrious and clean, he could not escape the prejudices of society. Robins never destroy crops, do not destroy flowers and plants, so why kill a good robin?
[03]
This part is the end of the book, but it is also the climax of the book.
The heroine and her brother are attacked by bad people in the dark, and Radley makes his first appearance in the dark, saving the brother and sister. The bad guy was stabbed to death with a knife.
When the sheriff arrives, he and his father analyze the cause of death of the bad guy, and all the inferences are that the murderer is Radley, but in the end the sheriff concludes that he himself fell on his knife and killed himself.
For this conclusion, the father also acquiesced.
Probably protecting this robin, so that this robin can continue to live a quiet life from being disturbed.
The novel concludes: "Between the neighbors, the dead in the family will send food, the sick in the family will send flowers, and in other cases, they will send small gifts." The freaks are our neighbors. He gave us two soap dolls, a pocket watch and bracelet that does not go away, a pair of auspicious coins, and our lives. ”
Why is the novel called Killing a Mockingbird? Because the author takes the perspective of a child, she cannot understand why people treat black people and strange people like this, she only knows that these things are very bad, bad, and in her eyes these things are as evil as killing the robin, so this metaphor of killing the robin is the simplest and purest but sharpest understanding of this series of things given by a child.
Black Tom was a robin, and so was Radley. Our world needs robins, and we don't let prejudice, discrimination, and humanity kill the mockingbirds.