White Trash (TKAM Reader's Response #2)

All classic books have the same problem. I’m not talking about things like old language style and deep subliminal messages. I’m talking about plot and storytelling. My favorite author, Stephen King is a great storyteller. He weaves the plot and the characters together so well that it seems that you are not reading the book. You are experiencing the book. This is why King is such a masterful horror writer. He shows the reader the horror and doesn’t just tell them about it. Literature classics like To Kill a Mockingbird has the problem of telling the reader what is going on in the story and not showing the reader. Showing the author what is happening adds to the immersion of the story and reader engagement. When the reader isn’t engaged it becomes slow and painful to read. I didn’t like this book because I never felt a connection to me. I wasn’t immersed into the story and usually I couldn’t connect with any of the characters.

If you have ever read To Kill a Mockingbird, you know that in the end Boo Radley is seen as a mockingbird because he was innocent all his life and shows it when he leaves gifts for Scout and Jem. I was thinking about Boo and then I wondered, if Boo is shy and nice, then Bob Ewell is whatever the opposite of a mockingbird is. I don’t think the book says this directly but Bob Ewell was probably born into a poor family. He was poor all of his life cursed by his parents with laziness. His family has no money and no education and sets the stage for a cycle of poverty. He is too lazy to get a job or help the rest of his family because he is either hungover or drunk is whole life and this has a very negative effect on his children, especially Mayella. We know that Mayella wants to get out of her situation but is forced to stay and watch her siblings that are not in school. This costs a man his life when Mayella does what she wants. If you look through the trauma lens with Mayella and why she did what she did, you can see that she is physically abused by her father and wants the thrill that she would get with Tom. In the trial Bob lies to protect what is left of his family name because in his mind, nothing would be worse than your daughter liking a married black man This plan backfires and the town sees them as worse than blacks because that was the only thing helping them. Finally Bob has nothing to lose. He is treated like scum, he has no money, no job and is hurting everyone around him and tries to get revenge on the person that ‘ruined’ him. Atticus Finch.