Chapter 20:
X-raying Harper Lee: Weight of the Wait
X-raying Harper Lee: Weight of the Wait
Weight of the Wait: Clark starts this chapter by telling a personal anecdote of a recent experience with To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. He then sets the scene of To Kill a Mockingbird, including information such as the story taking place during 1930-35 and being composed of characters such as Atticus Finch, Jem, and Scout.
Rhetorical Grammar: Clark sets his x-ray vision on chapter 21 of To Kill a Mockingbird, a well renouned chapter not only in the book, but in literature as a whole. An excerpt is provided of a court scene within the chapter. It is noted that the passage contains rhetorical strategies such as repetition.
Story Engines: An example of a familiar "story engine" is " guilty or not guilty". A reason this is so popular is the suspense and seeming manipulation of time a trial or court scene creates. Clark insists that "time, we know from experience and from quantum mechanics, is relative. In my personal theory of time, its speed depends on our consciousness of it. If we are '"watching the clock”' in a classroom or workplace, time can crawl. Or, if we are distracted by work or entertainment, it can '"fly by.”' Clark ties this into creating a feeling of suspense in this story engine structure.
Tictock Structure: The beginning of chapter 21 of To Kill a Mockingbird is delved into more deeply, with plentiful quotes from the text to support the two compelling elements of this section of text: segregation and the passage of time.
Gentile Surprise: Further insight is provided for the end of Chapter 21 of To Kill a Mockingbird, including a look back on the context of the language used in the time period of the novel compared to what is deemed appropriate for today's classroom. The chapter ends with the sentiment that it is important to discuss perceptions of "race, class, gender, region, and religion" in relation to the work of art being examined and the current state of the world.
1. X-ray reading can detect and interpret texts that are embedded in other texts, such as the closing argument made by Atticus Finch to the all-white, all-male southern jury. This is a rousing, if seemingly futile, speech about democracy and justice, delivered with its own set of rhetorical flourishes, from the power of parallelism to emphatic word order to the strategic use of the short sentence. All these tools are available to you as a writer and to the speakers who inhabit your work.
2. While there are no absolute requirements for telling good stories, time and again we see the benefits of certain strategies. One of them has been called a story engine—a question that only the story can answer. Some genres, such as the whodunit, come equipped with their own internal combustion engines. And remember that a story like Mockingbird raises and answers many important questions along the way.
3. The first picture I ever drew—my mother saved it—was the face of a clock. The ticktock structure of the transparent in the name of suspense, it can slow time down—often with the tool of shorter and shorter sentences, forcing the reader to wait and anticipate an outcome.
4. When suspense is resolved, there is often an opportunity for a surprise, an exploitation of the reader’s expectations of what will come next. The author can create a twist or, better yet, an enhanced experience. We thought the high point of chapter 21 would be the verdict. In fact, the guilty verdict in the Jim Crow South was predictable. What followed was a more transcendent moment as the black citizens of the town stand to pay homage to the white lawyer.
The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing p.222-223Although To Kill a Mockingbird is deemed more acceptable to teach in schools than, say, Lolita, there are still elements of the novel that need to be addressed and explained well so students understand the context and significance of social and cultural aspects of the era.
This chapter ties in with the "Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing" because gaining the most out of a story like this needs rhetorical knowledge. This is "the ability to analyze and act on understandings of audiences, purposes, and contexts in...comprehending texts" (6). The ability to understand the context of the time period is essential to grasp texts such as To Kill a Mockingbird.