“To Kill a Mockingbird”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” April 27, 2017

 

Gregory Peck and Brock Peters as Finch and Robinson
Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962)

 

My wife and I watched a very well-done performance of To Kill a Mockingbird at the Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley City tonight.  It’s a story that I love.

 

Here are a couple of quotations from the play:

 

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

 

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

 

In 2003, the American Film Institute announced, as the result of a poll of somebody or other, that Atticus Finch, as played by Gregory Peck in 1962, was the greatest hero in all of American cinema.

 

I can certainly accept that verdict.

 

A number of years ago, my wife and I were visiting the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles when we suddenly found ourselves standing before the tomb of Gregory Peck, who had been a pretty serious Catholic.  (He had once considered entering the priesthood.)  I was surprised at how moved I was to be there.  Because of To Kill a Mockingbird and a number of his other roles, I realized, Gregory Peck meant a great deal to me.

 

 

The last resting place of Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck’s tomb in Los Angeles (Wikimedia CC public domain)

 

And, to me, one of the most moving scenes in any film, ever, occurs at the end of Tom Robinson’s trial in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Atticus has fought the good fight, but he’s lost.  Injustice has triumphed.  The crowd leaves the court room, but the people in the “Negro section” (from which Atticus’s daughter, “Scout,” and the other two white children have been watching the proceedings) remain seated.  And then, after Atticus has gathered up his papers and has begun to move toward the door, the blacks in the balcony above him rise to their feet.  “Miss Jean Louise,” Reverend Sykes tells “Scout,” who has been sitting beside him, “stand up. Your father’s passing.”  It’s a simple but unforgettably powerful homage to moral courage, even in a losing cause.

 

 


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