by Dave Davlin
“To Kill A Mockingbird”, a novel written by Harper Lee, was published in 1960 and became a movie in 1962. The backdrop was a small town in Alabama during the Great Depression of the 1930’s when, as the movie states, “A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.” Sound familiar?
Although there were many wonderful and memorable characters in the film including Atticus Finch, Scout, Jem, Dill and Tom Robinson, one character was never seen until the final scene of the movie. That character was Arthur Radley, better known to the townspeople as “Boo” Radley.
The ironic thing was that “Boo” only lived two houses down the street from Atticus and his two children, Jem and Scout. Even more peculiar was the fact that although none of the children had ever actually seen “Boo”, they all could tell you what he looked like. In the words of Jem, “He’s about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long, jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.”
Yes everyone, including the adults but especially the children, knew of Boo Radley and the horrible monster he was. Or, did they really?
If you saw the movie or read the book, you remember the surprise ending vividly. Jem and Scout are walking home alone after leaving the Fall Festival at the school. It’s a dark autumn night and the wind is blowing fervently through the trees along the wooded trail they are walking.
Out of the darkness, a large figure attacks the children so severely that it leaves Jem unconscious. Clouded by the ham costume she is wearing from her part in the school play, Scout’s vision is obscured but she can see the silhouette of a second figure as he wrestles with her attacker. As Scout adjusts the eyehole in her costume, she sees a figure carrying Jem down the street to their home.
As this ordeal is played out, based on the beliefs and accounts of the characters, the audience is convinced that this attack has been brought on by none other than ‘Boo” Radley. Yet ironically, in the very next scene which takes place in Jem’s room, the audience learns that “Boo” was not the attacker but in fact was the one who rescued the children from the attack.
As the movie ends, you hear the narration of an adult Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch as she says these words, “Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives.”
As I think about the setting of and the characters in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, I cannot help but think about the similarities to the current situation our country faces surrounding the COVID-19 Pandemic. We are certainly not experiencing the depths of the Great Depression but somehow “A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with” seems to apply.
But even more, I think about the similarities to “Boo” Radley. As many of the townspeople had never seen the “Boo” they feared, we cannot see the virus we fear. And I wonder if we sometimes tell the story so often that, even if in our own minds, we make this monster bigger and worse than it really is.
Now, I am in no way downplaying the destruction and devastation this virus has caused. People have died, unemployment has skyrocketed, businesses have been destroyed, retirements accounts have been drastically reduced and the list goes on. This is real and it is devastating. But just like Jem and Scout, maybe our “Boo” has in some ways given at least part of our lives back to us. Even more, maybe it is the part we needed so much but did not realize we had lost.
Almost every night for the past six weeks, my wife and I have sat relaxing in lawn chairs at the edge of our driveway. I have never seen so many people walking with their families or riding bikes. I am speaking to neighbors I have not spoken to in years. Kids and teenagers who are typically glued to smartphones are running, biking and actually having non-technology conversations with their friends.
Instead of piling into cars and heading to the local eatery, families are sitting around kitchen tables, eating home-made meals and having meaningful conversations about life. Husbands and wives are spending quality time together and entire families are playing board games and watching movies. Children are playing under streetlights again and creating their own games, much like their grandparents did in the 1970’s. Balls are being bounced and thrown and skateboards are no longer covered with spider webs and dust.
Just like all seasons, the season of COVID-19 will pass and a new season will come. Scout knew this and expressed it in her final words.
“The summer that had begun so long ago had ended, and another summer had taken its place, and a fall, and Boo Radley had come out. I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem, and Dill, and Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson, and Atticus. He would be in Jem’s room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”
Do I miss parts of “life before Corona”? Sure, I do. And in time, we will get back to that. But for right now, I’m just happy to be on the Radley front porch … trying to find the good in “Boo” and remembering the part of life he returned to me, what he taught me and hoping not to forget when I wake up in the morning.
Dave Davlin is a professional speaker, a former halftime performer for NBA teams and a 1990 Guinness World record holder for simultaneously spinning twelve basketballs on his body at the same time. Dave can be contacted by email at dave@davedavlin.com
