"Seeing the Real Boo"

Remember “To Kill a Mockingbird”? You probably read it (or were supposed to read it) in high school. I know I read it, and I remembered it was about a lawyer who defended a wrongly-accused African-American man in the Deep South. What I had forgotten was the real point of the story: seeing the real Boo. The last page had for me a “take-your-breath” away moment. The last paragraphs provide a stunning summary  of why human beings are so bad at making peace and so good at creating strife. It explains why successful political speech still begins by painting others as a Boo we need to fear. It offers a formula for peace among nations and neighborhoods.

Boo was the reclusive neighbor of Jem and his little sister, Scout. Jem, Scout and their friend, Dill, spend their summers trying to get Boo to come out of his house. They are so afraid of Boo that they fear just walking by the place, and to go up to his door is seen as walking into the doorway of death.  In the end, of course, we discover the truth about Boo, that he was the protector of the children, saving them from death. Boo is spared from the reach of the law because, after all, “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Scout view of Boo changes when she walks Boo home after he saves her, and as she turns to leave, she sees the world (their neighborhood) from Boo’s point of view. Now she begins to understand who Boo really is.

The novel concludes as Atticus is putting young Scout to bed the night of the violent attack upon her, and he reads her a story to help her sleep.  It’s a story about a “three-fingered boy” who his friends accused of “messin’ up their clubhouse and throwin’ ink all over it an’…” Scout explains the meaning of the story to her father: “An’ they chased him ‘n’ never could catch him ‘cause they didn’t know what he looked like, an’ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things…Atticus, he was real nice….”  To which Atticus replies, “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”

We all have a “Boo” we fear, as neighbors and nations. What will it take for us to see the world from our “Boo’s” point of view?  Why do we insist on killing mockingbirds?