{"id":3041,"date":"2015-07-25T09:08:33","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T13:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=3041"},"modified":"2015-08-07T17:46:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-07T21:46:00","slug":"getting-inside-the-mind-of-the-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2015\/07\/25\/getting-inside-the-mind-of-the-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Inside the Mind of The Child"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"To_Kill_a_Mockingbird\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before reading Harper Lee’s\u00a0Go Set a Watchman<\/em>, I decided to reread\u00a0To Kill a Mockingbird,\u00a0<\/em>a book that I did not love when I first encountered it. \u00a0 The novel\u00a0had been assigned to my son, in eighth grade at the time, and we read it together, aloud. \u00a0Imagine my shock when, the second time around, I fell under the spell of\u00a0To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, and–its imperfections aside (the ending always struck me as\u00a0melodramatic and contrived)–would make myself stop reading from time to time to make the book last longer.<\/p>\n

Most will agree that Harper Lee lets us see the world through the eyes of a child in powerful ways. \u00a0Scout tells the story as an adult but she slips back with ease into the consciousness of her experiencing self, seamlessly moving back to the older and wiser adult, who adds information and clarifies the child’s account. \u00a0Scout is young, yet\u00a0To Kill a Mockingbird\u00a0<\/em>is a coming-of-age novel, a genre designation\u00a0that moves the book into the YA fiction camp. \u00a0But like Donna Tartt’s\u00a0The Goldfinch<\/em> (why all the birds in fiction about the young?),\u00a0To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>\u00a0is a book for adults as much as for the young, perhaps more for adults than children. \u00a0My discontent during that first reading stemmed in part, I believe, from the sense that you had to be an adult to understand how Harper Lee lets us go back to our own childhoods and immerse ourselves in all the perils of childhood–the injustices, the powerlessness, the transgressive energy–and also its comforts and pleasures. \u00a0When you are 13, you get that and don’t need a Proustian nudge.<\/p>\n

To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> takes us inside a child’s mind, but it also self-reflexively sends a powerful message about the importance of\u00a0perspective, identification, and empathy. \u00a0“You never really understand a \u00a0person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” Atticus tells Scout. \u00a0And the golden moment near the end of the novel, when Scout’s voice shifts into the third person and describes the events in her story from Boo Bradley’s point of view, tells us that she has internalized her father’s wisdom. \u00a0In some ways, Harper Lee’s book inaugurated an age of empathy.<\/p>\n

Last night I went to see\u00a0Inside Out<\/em>, with my son, now grown up. \u00a0Imagine my surprise when he found it captivating and true, and I found the execution lifeless even as I loved the concept. \u00a0I made a quick note to myself to see it again, though this time I won’t wait fifteen years to come to my senses<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\"Pixar<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Before reading Harper Lee’s\u00a0Go Set a Watchman, I decided to reread\u00a0To Kill a Mockingbird,\u00a0a book that I did not love when I first encountered it. \u00a0 The novel\u00a0had been assigned to my son, in eighth grade at the time, and we read it together, aloud. \u00a0Imagine my shock when, the second time around, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3041"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3061,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions\/3061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}