Reimagining To Kill a Mockingbird: Family, Community, and the Possibility of Equal Justice under Law

Chapter Eight: Humans, Animals, and Boundary Objects in Maycomb

172  CHAP TER EIGHT Humans, Animals, and Boundary Objects in Maycomb Colin Dayan A black dog suffered on a summer’s day. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird What is an animal? What is human? What is good? What is evil? It might seem that these questions are easily answered in To Kill a Mockingbird , even when the bounds are permeable, when such distinctions are most threatened. There is something equivocal in Harper Lee’s assumptions about human and animal, about the role of reason in making us who we are. The easy, comfortable stance granted to those who are elite, hereditarily and historically accepted members of the Maycomb County community and who quite naturally claim it as “home” is not granted to those who live on the southern edge of town, near the dump, or in “the quarters.” Although the taxonomies of the novel seem clear and its hierarchy appears obvious, there are moments in the film when the viewer becomes uncomfortably aware that the boundaries of humanity are being tested. The mad dog carries a great deal of weight in the film, even though he remains unnamed (in the book he is called Tim Johnson),is present for only a few minutes, and is seen only far in the distance, never close up. In the book Tim is described as “a liver-colored bird dog, the pet of Maycomb.”1 But the film strips the dog of belonging and identification.It also deprives him of his status as property. For who owns the dog? In the book we learn nothing about the owner, Mr. Harry Johnson, except that he drives the Humans, Animals, and Boundary Objects in Maycomb 173 bus and lives somewhere on the border of town. But in the film the dog appears as a stray, not a pet. He is res nullius; he belongs to no one. Here I examine how the making and management of human boundary objects, whether human or nonhuman animals, ensure the liberal beneficence of Atticus Finch and the civilized values he represents. The courtroom scenes are at the center of numerous rituals of exclusion that enforce the division between the worthy and the worthless, those put in proximity with pigs and those who live “clean”and do “right.”The goodness of Atticus Finch, I suggest, depends on the project of dumping, the disregarding of persons deemed noxious to the community of well-meaning citizens— those outside the precincts of law.To be made superfluous is to be outside the pale of human empathy, and this movie frames the waste products of society in peculiarly salient ways. Why a Dog Only two creatures in To Kill a Mockingbird are disposable. Objects of disregard, they can be killed without provoking the concern of the community , without due process of law. It is as if they occupy a special terrain, doomed to be delivered to subjection or disposal without recourse. Their deaths seem necessary, legitimate, and reasonable. The unnamed dog and Bob Ewell are both killed. In a sense, they are both nuisances—and ferocious : the dog maddened by rabies and Ewell rabid with hatred. In the novel Scout’s words raise the unsettling possibility that the dog might not be “mad” but just a threat, not suffering from rabies but “sick,” not foaming from the mouth, not leaping or lunging, but just, in Jem’s words, “lookin’ for a place to die.”2 In the film the dog appears out of nowhere, barking, moving down the street in a bizarre combination of wobbling and bounding.Thin and scruffy, his ribs noticeable even though the camera (like the gun that will kill him) keeps far away, the dog remains forever in the distance, even as he comes closer, causing terror to Calpurnia, Scout, and Jem. But Atticus is not afraid, and though Sheriff Heck Tate knows what must be done, he cannot do it. So Atticus raises his rifle, looks through the scope, takes off his glasses, and shoots the dog dead. Although what I call the dog fable takes up nearly seven pages in the book, in the film only a couple of minutes are needed to make the points required: Atticus is not feeble but strong; the police power when 174 Colin Dayan accompanied by legal nobility (in the person of Atticus) can exterminate any threat to communal health and safety. So the mad dog is not only a...