I don't agree with this assessment at all. Lee's intent when penning To Kill a Mockingbird was not to indict the world of Southern people during the Great Depression as unsensibly cruel and ugly. She wanted to preserve what to her was a world that was becoming extinct with modernity. It was a world full of imagination and simple pleasures. But it was also slow to change without people being very considerate about their reasons for continuing to do things that had been done for generations, i.e., treating black people like untrustworthy and impulsive children. Just one facet of many that this book has to offer. It's not "Look how stupid and backward everyone I grew up with was!" It's "people are usually generally good, but sometimes they have dangerous blind spots." Boo Radley's forays into the world as a younger person had brought him in contact with the law and was bringing shame upon his family. His family had agreed with the proposition from the state to keep him confined at home rather than send him off to a juvenile correctional facility or mental institution. Boo had been a shut-in for so long that he developed an anxiety disorder when confronted with being social and drawing attention to himself. He mirrored how Harper Lee felt about herself. He wasn't making some sort of narrative statement about evil southern bigots. He was just one of the eccentricities about small town southern life. His weird mannerisms still garnered attention, and he became legendary in the minds of the children who could never conceive of being asocial. And he was a device to reveal to them their own blind spots and prejudices as he was revealed to be kind and generous. But he wasn't hiding for the sake of some deeply-held philosophical conviction.
I don't agree with this assessment at all. Lee's intent when penning To Kill a Mockingbird was not to indict the world of Southern people during the Great Depression as unsensibly cruel and ugly. She wanted to preserve what to her was a world that was becoming extinct with modernity. It was a world full of imagination and simple pleasures. But it was also slow to change without people being very considerate about their reasons for continuing to do things that had been done for generations, i.e., treating black people like untrustworthy and impulsive children. Just one facet of many that this book has to offer. It's not "Look how stupid and backward everyone I grew up with was!" It's "people are usually generally good, but sometimes they have dangerous blind spots."
Boo Radley's forays into the world as a younger person had brought him in contact with the law and was bringing shame upon his family. His family had agreed with the proposition from the state to keep him confined at home rather than send him off to a juvenile correctional facility or mental institution. Boo had been a shut-in for so long that he developed an anxiety disorder when confronted with being social and drawing attention to himself. He mirrored how Harper Lee felt about herself. He wasn't making some sort of narrative statement about evil southern bigots. He was just one of the eccentricities about small town southern life. His weird mannerisms still garnered attention, and he became legendary in the minds of the children who could never conceive of being asocial. And he was a device to reveal to them their own blind spots and prejudices as he was revealed to be kind and generous. But he wasn't hiding for the sake of some deeply-held philosophical conviction.