I’m coming back to reading
“It’s like Deja-vu, all over again.”
-Yogi Berra
I used to read. I used to read a lot. Of course, I used to read, didn’t everyone? I didn’t want to start my essay with the stale statement, but I did because it really applied to me. Did we not indulge ourselves with books from Roald Dahl, JK Rowling and other great pieces of literature? Imagining that I was playing “wizard chess” with Harry and the gang or envisaging being in the place of Matilda and fighting Ms. Trunchbull for the sake of her teacher Ms. Honey. Those were the golden ages of reading. Then came essays, text responses and forced reading of “Whale Rider”. Coming into high school from primary school my view on reading was more of a “nerdy” pastime rather than something I should enjoy doing more. So, I slowly faded away from books. All my Roald Dahl and Harry Potter series gathered dust and grew weary. And so did my English scores.
The hit on my English scores was like a call to reading. The advertisement selling Kindles that came up whilst I was shopping for shoes called me to reading and even my mum, stated that reading habits could greatly enhance my English scores. Then my English teacher said that we had read 6 books of different style throughout the year… I decided to purchase a Kindle, an investment out of my own pocket, found a list of “must-read” books and started on my journey.
I started off with Harper Lee’s classic novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”. This well-known piece of literature is told from the perspective of a young girl named Jean Finch who is referenced as Scout, which was her nickname. Scout, lives with her father Atticus, her older brother Jem and her cook Calpurnia. Atticus, who is a lawyer, is faced with a case where a black man is being accused of “raping” a daughter of a white farmer. Atticus takes this case very personally and we explore the themes of racism and innocence within the novel.
The hefty, main theme of racism and discrimination which plays out through Tom Robinson, the black man who is accused of raping a white girl named Mayella Ewell, is proven innocent in the trial due the fact that Mayella’s face was mainly bruised and injured on the right side of her face and Tom Robinson is RIGHT HANDED which meant the left side of her face should have been bruised. Instead, it was almost certain that as Atticus suspected, it was Robert Ewell, her father who had assaulted Mayella, for sexually harassing Tom. Robert Ewell who was left-handed was most likely the assailant in this case.
Regardless of this evidence, it was a white man’s word against a black man’s and eventually, they would go on to lose the case. The jury contemplate their decisions but are pressured by the racial and social standpoints within Maycomb. As the book was set in the 1930s in the deep south in America, there was still biased opinion on black people, with the existence of the apartheid still in place at the time. Throughout this entire case, Atticus is faced with criticism from the other townspeople for defending a black man.
Quote pg180: “Lemme tell you somethin’ now Billy,” a third said, “you know the court appointed him to defend this n*gger.”
“Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it.”
Tom Robinson is eventually killed trying to escape his biased trial and the theme of innocence is brought to play.
the theme of innocence relies on Scout and Jem both losing their innocence after witnessing this entire plot unfold through their naïve point of view. They are revealed to the realities of the world and how one man’s bold actions were subjugated and criticized for the justice of another. How hate and one’s discriminative mindset could result in the deaths of many. However, the most important feature of the theme is in the novel’s title. Atticus claims “to kill a mockingbird” is a great sin, as they do not play any harm into our lives, but “they sing their hearts out”.
Quote pg99–100: “Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about. “Your father is right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing out their hearts for us. That’s why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
The innocence in this quote is directly referenced to the other characters through a metaphor, comparing the characters to the mockingbirds. The characters like Tom Robinson or Boo Radley (a man feared by the children for the rumours surrounding him)T have not done harm to anyone. If anything, Boo Radley protected the children against Robert Ewell and gave them a blanket during the fire. The mockingbirds are related to the other innocent characters in the novel through a series of quotes. In Mr. Underwood’s editorial he compares Tom Robinson’s death to;
Quote pg265: “The senseless slaughter of songbirds (mockingbirds) by hunters and children.”
On page 305, Atticus states that hurting Boo Radley would be quote: “…be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”.
The depressing yet proud moment, of leaving of your innocence really made a big impact on me. Moving into my teenage years, I was really exposed to vile and corrupted things. As a 20th century teens, I realised just how exposed we were to the realities of life through the accessibility of social media and the internet. By the end of the novel, Scout and Jem are 3 years older than what they were at the start. It made me think; If they were stripped of their innocence this much in the mid-1930s, how vulnerable would the kids of our generation and future generations be with the overwhelming amount of exposure we have? It saddened me.
My next book was Becoming by Michelle Obama. Becoming is a detailed summary of Michelle Obama’s entire life so far. Michelle splits the biography into three separate parts: Becoming me, becoming us and finally becoming more. Michelle Obama moves through her childhood, her relationship with Barack Obama and finally her involvement within the white house. Michelle writes about her relationships with her family members and Barack Obama’s pollical journey to becoming a two-term president of the US. However, the biggest aspect of her life that stood out to me was her empowering others with the power of her voice. Michelle Obama empowered those who were especially subject to racism, discrimination, poverty and violence.
Michelle Obama had supported those that were brushed aside by creating initiatives and programs. Obama had created Joining Forces, which is an initiative that supports veterans and military families. Let Girls Learn focuses on educating not only disadvantaged girls but all girls around the world. Reach Higher, helps challenged students to stay in college. Michelle Obama also went to visit families of those affected by gun violence and injured veterans from Iraq. It made me ponder why Michelle Obama had chosen to create these opportunities/initiatives. Most of the First Ladies in the past were there just to make their husbands look better, they really did not get involved. However, Michelle has been working towards the better wellbeing of the US. From starting healthy eating campaigns to creating a stronger relationship with the Queen (which resulted in stronger relations with the UK), Michelle Obama supported the US citizens to the best of her abilities. It was quite inspiring.
There are themes of racism and discrimination which starts from her childhood years. When her brother Craig buys a new bike, he is immediately under suspicion from the police as a “young black man could never have gotten a bike legally”.
Quote: He’d been promptly picked up by a police officer who accused him of stealing it, unwilling to accept that a young black boy would have come across a new bike in an honest way. (The officer, an African American man himself, ultimately got a brutal tongue-lashing from my mother, who made him apologize to Craig.) What had happened, my parents told us, was unjust but unfortunately common. The colour of our skin made us vulnerable. It was a thing we’d always have to navigate. When Michelle goes to visit her family friends who had moved into the “predominantly white” neighbourhood, her father’s prized car is scratched by the neighbours. In Princeton, Michelle Obama shares a dormitory with a white girl. However, she moves out of the dormitory after a bit. Michelle later finds out that the white girl’s mother had could not tolerate her daughter sharing a dorm with a “black person”.
Michelle states that not only was she was subject to racism but was also oppressed because of her gender. She was commonly ridiculed as a quote: “angry black woman”, which is a common racist comment made towards black women. Then came the ridiculous comments from Donald Trump about Barack Obama. Quote: “Crazy rumours swirled about Barack: that he’d been schooled in a radical Muslim madrassa and sworn into the Senate on a Koran. That he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. That he wouldn’t put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. That he had a close friend who was a domestic terrorist from the 1970s.”
Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Just what you would hear from Donald Trump though.
Regardless of these comments Michelle Obama soldiers on Quote: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s the power of using your voice. I tried as often as I could to speak the truth and shed light on the stories of people who are often brushed aside”. Michell who learned the Piano from her great aunt Robbie demanded that she plays every piece perfectly before moving onto the next. She states that her mother treated herself and her brother as adult which gave her the values of hard work and independence from a young age which shaped who she is today. EXTREMELY INSPIRING.
Continuing my trend of discrimination, I decided to read one who flew over the cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey which was on TIME magazine’s 100 best English language novels. One who flew over the cuckoo’s nest is about patients in a mental hospital and their story of overcoming their fears and rebelling against tyrannical power. One who flew over the cuckoo’s nest told through the perspective Chief Bromden an Indian has deceived the entire hospital that he is dumb and deaf. The main plot is told from his perspective. The Mental Hospital is run by “the big nurse”, who strikes psychological fear into those at the hospital so that she may have total control over the entire ward. The story begins when Randle McMurphy, is admitted into the hospital. McMurphy’s carefree, wild nature is too much for the highly systematic Big Nurse to handle. McMurphy convinces the other patients in the hospital that they are being suppressed by the big nurse to speak their minds. McMurphy then rebels against the policies leading the patients to speak up against the policies they didn’t like.
Quote: “Now that McMurphy was around to back them up, the guys started letting fly at everything that had ever happened on the ward that they didn’t like”.
Sparks fly between McMurphy and the big nurse in the battle for power.
Eventually, one of the characters, Billy Bibbit who is admitted to the hospital for a deep fear of powerful women, loses his virginity to prostitutes. When the big nurse she states that she will tell his mother of this incident. In fear of his mother finding out, he slits his own throat and dies. This causes anger to McMurphy and he chokes and injures the big nurse.
Quote: “First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives — gambling with human lives — as though you thought yourself to be a God!”.
Despite the endless number of themes in the novel, rebellion is a big one that stood out to me. McMurphy rebels against the “big nurse” using a series of schemes. Whether it be: disrupting the meticulously planned out schedule or using the power of democracy to vote out on a specific policy, McMurphy did it without the use of violence. Rebellion was something I was very familiar with. In 2016–2017, president Park Geun-Hye was impeached from her role after a series of political scandals. Also known as the candlelight protests, my entire extended family decided to rock up to the parliament house in Seoul and protest Park Geun-Hye. My mother was worried sick that the police would attack the crowd of over a hundred thousand to disband the protests. However, the protests were extremely peaceful and non-violent with the protestors in a relatively good mood throughout the entire protests which went on for months. No arrests. No deaths. The rebellious attitudes of McMurphy and the other patients were reminiscent of the protests that I had been a part of.
Discrimination is a big theme that plays out throughout the entire novel. The patients are subjected to discrimination whilst at the fuel station by the fuel assistants on their way to a fishing trip. Instead of just accepting their prejudiced situation, McMurphy uses their insaneness to intimidate the fuel workers.
Quote: “Now Hank, don’t you see that was just a kindly precaution to keep from startlin’ you folks with the truth? The doc wouldn’t lie like that about just any patients, but we ain’t ordinary nuts; we’re every bloody one of us hot off the criminal-insane ward, on our way to San Quentin where they got better facilities to handle us. You see that freckle-faced kid there? Now he might look like he’s right off a Saturday Evening Post cover, but he’s an insane knife artist that killed three men. The man beside him is known as the Bull Goose Loony, unpredictable as a wild hog. You see that big guy? He’s an Indian and he beat six white men to death with a pick handle when they tried to cheat him trading muskrat hides….”
McMurphy’s attitude reminded me of the African American people fighting back against discrimination from the whites. Whereas in the novel it’s the mental institution against the Big nurse and the rude discriminatory people of the world.
As a first-generation immigrant, racism was a constant for me and my family. My mum and I would go to the supermarket and we would be denied service at the service desk. We would be ignored and the customers behind us would be serviced first. Neither of us could speak English. I was only five years old. Now, as a taller, English speaking teen. I feel more comfortable here and I feel less subjected to bigotry. However, my parents still feel the weight of living in a foreign country and constantly crave their home country.
It was like in all of the books I had read, that I had been there before, in the place of the characters. Not literally, but I had definitely experienced some of the feelings she characters were feeling in the novels. I’d like to thank everyone who has helped me come back to reading. I have definitely developed strong reading habits and hopefully, it will help my English grades. Reading has given me a new insight into the world. It has made me realise the realities, the harshness and the coldness of the world. It has matured me I think and I will continue to read.
