A father revisits Atticus

This week’s winner

MANILA, Philippines - Laurence Arroyo, 44, is a partner in the law firm Flaminiano Arroyo & Duenas. He is a trial lawyer and has been practicing for 17 years. He teaches Evidence at Ateneo Law School. He considers his mentor Atty. Jose B. Flaminiano as a real-life Atticus Finch.

I am a lawyer and, yes, I was a child once, too. And it was as a child that I first set foot in Maycomb County and met Scout and Jem and their bugbear, Boo Radley.

Back then, I experienced the story through the eyes and voice of its young, sprightly narrator, Scout. I shared her and her brother’s sense of exhilaration, adventure, and sometimes terror as they persistently sought out their reclusive neighbor Boo.

I recently reread To Kill a Mockingbird, this time, though, as a father (and lawyer). Despite the passage of years, the characters have remained familiar to me. Scout and Jem and Dill and Boo Radley were as I remembered them to be.

As for Atticus Finch, I remembered him only as the father of Scout and Jem, and not much else. I paid little attention to Atticus Finch, the same way Scout and Jem, preoccupied with their games and caught up in their own world, paid little attention to him.

Yet, now that I am a father, I find that the book is as much about Atticus as it is about Scout and Jem and Boo Radley.

Atticus is no hands-on father. Calpurnia, their loyal and loving black housekeeper, takes care of the details of daily living. Atticus even seems too lax at times. Mrs. Dubose, a neighbor, faults him  and rightly, perhaps  for allowing his children to call him “Atticus.” He does not join them in their games, he is too old for that. He leaves his children much to themselves, but when principle or character or decency is an issue or at stake, he draws the line and holds them to a standard that he himself can meet. While he keeps largely to the background, Atticus, in fact, stands in the center of their lives.

Atticus never fails to respectfully greet Mrs. Dubose, their neighbor who has been rendered wrathful by age and pain, and he requires the same courtly conduct from his children. He compels Jem to go visit daily the embittered Mrs. Dubose to read to her. In a fit of anger, Jem destroys the camellias in her garden. Mrs. Dubose taunts them by saying, “Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for,” and something in Jem snaps. He unleashes his anger on her flowers, the only thing in full bloom in a house and life that have withered with the passage of time. Reading to her is his penance. But more than punishment, the reading sessions are intended to make the children see and understand why an old lady such as Mrs. Dubose has grown bitter over the years. It is also intended to make them see the brave side of the broken woman. She does not have long to live and she spends her last few days fighting against the pain that has managed to deform her. Soon after the reading sessions end, so does Mrs. Dubose’s life. The miracle though is that as her body grows weaker, her will grows stronger. Her objective is to get off the morphine that she has become dependent on. She is on the verge of death but her spirit is coming to life. Death has put an end to her pain, but not before she herself conquered it. This act of courage unfolds before the eyes of the children. Putting up with her offensive words and ways was a small price to pay to witness real courage in action. 

Atticus allows his children to attend Sunday service at Calpurnia’s Church over the objections of his sister. It does not do his children any harm to attend a church composed of black people. In fact, it would do Scout and Jem some good. They would be among people who did not mind their whiteness and who sang their hearts out, grateful, despite being treated as lesser beings, to a God who at least has given them a crack at life.

Atticus seldom contradicts his sister; it requires too much effort and energy on his part. Time can be better spent in his rocking chair, reading a newspaper. But this matter touched too deeply on the issue of character. His sister is welcome to teach Scout the ways of ladies (such as entertaining guests, serving tea, trading in the overalls for the frilly dress  politeness and graciousness, after all, enhance personality  but no amount of feminine trappings could turn Scout into a lady if she grows up believing that blacks were inferior people praying to an inferior God.

Atticus agrees to defend in court a black man who has been accused of raping a white woman in the Deep South back in those days when only white people were capable of speaking the truth and white trash was better than any black man. Tom Robinson is already found guilty the moment the accusation flies out of the mouth of the white woman, and no amount of argument and evidence can establish his innocence. Atticus the lawyer will give it his best shot anyway. Never mind that his decision will surely invite the opprobrium of the community or even expose his life to risk. Atticus the father owed it to his children to stand up for a man who has not done anyone any wrong. After all, he does tell his children not to kill the mockingbirds.   

The story ends a few summers after it began. Bob Ewell, seeking revenge against Atticus for exposing him to be a liar at Tom Robinson’s trial, assaults the children. Boo, in defense of the children, sticks a kitchen knife into Bob’s chest, killing him. 

Atticus and Sheriff Heck, both men of the law, uncharacteristically agree to look the other way. If Jem, in self-defense, has killed Bob, then Jem, with his father by his side, would have to face the consequences of his act. But not Boo: he is a stranger to the world and he needs to be protected from it. A public trial would have crushed his spirit, the same way it crushed the spirit of Tom Robinson. There was no point in killing a mockingbird, not even in the name of the law.

I am a father to four boys: Migoy, Zo, Luis, and Manu. I am not the perfect father, but I (together with my wife) try to raise my children the best way we can. When they have all grown up to be fine young men, I would like them to look back and best remember me as the father who, by his quiet example, taught them to leave alone the mockingbirds.