Nelle Harper Lee, better known by her pen name Harper Lee, was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960. Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modem American literature. In 1991 an organization conducted a survey that made readers identify books that had “made a difference” in their lives. The result? Lee’s book trailed only The Bible. Alongside the works of Shakespeare and Twain, this novel remains one of the most widely taught books nationwide, reaching about 70% of American public schools. What makes it such a typical read for young people?
English class is a place where young Americans come to know themselves. In the folds of dusty books, students can make contact with humanity beyond the shallow small talk of the school hallways. Disturbed by hormones (荷尔蒙)and anxiety, teenagers get through school with confusion and frustration. Literature is a safety valve (安全阀) 一 it promises relief, a place to figure out one's problems and get to know oneself better.
The novel particularly distinguishes itself in this aspect. It speaks in a child’s voice without treating its readership as children. Some critics have called it an “impossible” achievement, a children's book penned by a well-educated adult — it’s unlikely that a child like Scout could exist in the real world. But that’s exactly what makes it such a charming, attractive read for young people. It indicates the consciousness of a well-educated adult facing difficult realities, but describes it through the light and playful voice of a curious little girl.
Gaby Hick, a third-year student focused on English literature at Brown University, calls it “one of the first books that kids and young adults read that deals with serious issues —rape, race, mental issues”. She adds, “The story makes these adult themes accessible because of Scout.” The book’s setting, a small town in Alabama affected by the Great Depression of the 1930s, may appear very different from the experience of most kids reading it today. But Lee’s words make her story feel alive and present.
In 2006, however, critic Thomas Mallon expressed his regret about the book’s avoiding complexity in The New Yorker. But her novel makes a great teaching tool for teenagers precisely because its moral view is as clear as that of one of Aesop's Fables. That absence of ambiguity (含糊其辞) in this novel doesn’t mean the novel is free of challenging ideas, either. Will Serratelli, another literature student at Brown says, “There aren’t many hard moral questions being asked …but it opens up all these other questions that 1 hadn’t thought about before. My English teachers always asked, ‘Do you sympathize (同情) with this character? Would you want to hang out with them?’ When you give a kid a book where those questions don’t even need to be asked, it forces them to dig deeper.”
Mallon's criticism is accurate in that this novel may present too limited a view of racism in America. That's especially problematic because it is one of the only books consistently assigned to American students that acknowledges (承认) racial discrimination (歧视) at all. However, To Kill a Mockingbird may owe some of its popularity as a teaching text to the fact that the narrative voice is a white one. Naomi Vamis, an African Studies student at Brown says, “It’s another practice of telling stories about black people through white central characters,” she says.
While the novel is undoubtedly worth its place in the classroom, English teachers may do well to consider that it is a white author’s perspective — and ought to be the only beginning of a dialogue about race and never the final word. But as a gateway to more mature ideas, and as a YA (young adult) distillation (提炼) of complex concepts young people may not have grasped before, Lee’s novel is invaluable.
【小题1】According to the passage, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird can help us .| A．reduce much anxiety for fear of losing ourselves |
| B．understand what the real personality of human is |
| C．know more about the past U.S. economic situation |
| D．find and deal with some other complicated questions |
| A．Was as good as. | B．Tried hard to defeat. |
| C．Went along the same route as. | D．Had a lower score than. |
| A．The kids are unwilling to answer challenging questions. |
| B．The kids have to face more moral questions. |
| C．The kids tend to sympathize with the characters. |
| D．The kids are motivated to think further. |
| A．Because it reveals racial discrimination in America. |
| B．Because a white author tells the stories about black people. |
| C．Because it makes some serious adult issues accessible. |
| D．Because it is widely used as a tool for moral judgments in society. |
| A．To tell us about the content of the novel. |
| B．To explain the reasons for its popularity. |
| C．To introduce some different comments. |
| D．To approve of the creative writing style. |
