Whether it's a short story or a long story, every story has one universal truth:
If there's no change by the end, there's no story.
Don't you agree?
And that universal truth begets another truth about stories:
At the end of the story, there's always a reversal.
(Hang with me, here-you'll see.)
Anyone writing essays will usually be asked to write an essay, not just a report, on a long story or a novel.
Using the two universal truths given, the following discussion should help anyone who writes essays about novels, in general, and about Harper Lee's extraordinary novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, in particular.
One more universal law:
Every published story ALWAYS has three things---
near the beginning, an OldView strong value statement in the middle, support or undercutting of the OldView at the ending, a reverse of the OldView
OLDVIEW
In Harper Lee's novel, there are many stories around the neighborhood and about the town featuring Boo Radley as some sort of monster. Because of those myths, Jem and Scout are frightened that Boo will kill them, even though they are so curious about him that they want him to come out so they can see him and play with him:
Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock on the front door?'I hope you've got it through your head that he'll kill us each and every one, Dill Harris,' said Jem, when we joined him. 'Don't blame me when he gouges your eyes out. You started it, remember.'
That strong OldView about fearful consequences related to Boo Radley keeps coming up in the story. Jem, Scout, and Dill often remind each other of the probability that Boo Radley will kill them all if he ever does come out of his house.
SUPPORT
In novels, support or undercutting of the OldView ALWAYS comes in the form of foils, conflicts, and resolutions.
Foils. The most obvious foils or strong contrasts are Jem and Scout contrasted to their father, Atticus. Of course, there are many other foils in the story, too, such as:
Miss Caroline versus Scout Jem versus Mrs. Dubose Scout versus cousin Francis Finch blacks versus whites Atticus versus the jury of townspeople Aunt Alexandra versus Cunninghams and Scout Miss Maudie Atkinson versus Miss Stephanie Crawford Sheriff Heck Tate versus Atticus
All these foil relationships can be viewed as echoes of the main foils of Jem and Scout versus their father, Atticus. That relationship provides the main stage within the story for displaying, and sometimes even outright discussing, the main theme of the story.
Conflicts & Resolutions. To prove to Scout and Dill that he's not afraid of Boo Radley, Jem leads them into doing three things that cause conflict with Atticus:
creates a play drama about the Radleys uses a long pole to try to sneak a note to Boo, through a window crawls under the fence in the Radleys' back yard
We can think of those three incidents as following a distinct pattern:
ignorance and assumptions plus bad result
That pattern is repeated in conflicts throughout the story.
For example, Jem's ignorance of Mrs. Dubose's illness and her courage in fighting morphine addiction resulted in his making unkind assumptions. As a result, Jem gets mad and destroys her flowers.
Another example is Jem and Scout's ignorance of what Atticus can do and can't do, which leads them to assume he can't do anything but read. That assumption makes them ashamed of him-until he shoots the mad dog.
The most promiment conflict concerns the trial of Tom Robinson, the black man falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell. The jury and the majority of the townspeople are ignorant of what a truly good person Tom Robinson is because he is black and, therefore, in their tradition-trained and tradition-bound eyes, he is not moral. That's the biggest, most wrong assumption in the entire story. Tom's conviction and death are the negative results.
We can see the acceptance of that wrong assumption about black people as similar to the accepted assumption Jem and Scout make that all scary stories about Boo Radley are true. Both assumptions are based on ignorance. But the reaction or result in Boo Radley's case, by contrast, is positive, not negative.
REVERSE
At the end, Boo Radley SAVES Jem and Scout's lives by protecting them from revengeful and murderous Bob Ewell. That's a perfect NewView Reverse of what they were afraid Boo would do to them from the beginning-instead of killing them, Boo Radley actually does the complete reverse by SAVING them from death.
That NewView Reverse is so very strong because all the other instances of the ignorance-and-assumptions pattern end in negative results.
(Besides the Boo Radley reverse at the end, there is one more incident that provides a positive result. Can you identify it? Okay, I'll give in and give you a hint. But first, I'll give you a chance to figure it on your own by hiding it at the end, here.)
That pattern of ignorance and assumptions plus negative result is the core of what bigotry and prejudice are all about. But Harper Lee shows us in her masterful story that bigotry and prejudice CAN be overcome---if we just learn to walk awhile in another's shoes.
Now you have a method for analyzing ANY published novel---and that means you know how to write lit analysis essays. So forget Spark Notes! Away with Cliffs Notes! You've got the NewView Method for Analyzing Novels!!!
(HINT: Scout and the mob of Cunninghams at the jail.)
Author Resource:-
Next you'll want to learn more about Bill Drew's popular book, The Secret DNA of Analyzing Short Stories. To see his other books on writing, go to his website.
Bill has been a technical writer, an editor, a technical support director, and a freelance programmer. He has also taught writing at a university and junior colleges.
Bill's NewView methods are being taught in elementary, middle
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