How the Child Broke the Mob

(Image taken from The Daily Beast)

How the Child Broke the Mob

To Kill a Mockingbird, written in 1960 by Harper Lee, is considered an American classic by many. The Pulitzer Prizewinning novel is taught in schools across the country, as it addresses important issues such as racial injustices, the destruction of innocence, class, courage, compassion, tolerance, gender roles, and many other topics. The novel takes place in the American south in the 1930s and details a summer in the life of Atticus Finch, as told by his six year old daughter Scout. Atticus, a lawyer, is assigned a case in which he is to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who is accused of raping a young white woman.

There are many scenes in the story that are relevant to social psychology, but there is one scene in particular that I have always found to be fascinating. In chapter fifteen of the novel, when Atticus leaves the house one night, Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill, head out in search of him. When they find him sitting outside of the local jail, reading the newspaper in the dim light, they start to head home. But just as they begin to leave, a string of cars pull up and come to a stop in front of the jail, and it’s revealed to the children hiding in the darkness, that the townsmen have come in search of Tom Robinson. When Scout realizes this could mean trouble, she dashes up the street, through the men, and into the light to join Atticus, with Jem and Dill not far behind. After the children refuse Atticus’s instructions to leave and go straight home, one of the men grab Jem by the collar, and after a physical altercation with the men, Scout looks around at the mob for a face that she recognizes.

She’s able to find one in Mr. Cunningham, whom she addresses but gets no response from. Trying to make friendly conversation, Scout introduces herself to Mr. Cunningham, and reminds him of a past interaction. “‘Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?”’ When this fails, she informs him that she goes to school with his boy, Walter. “I began to sense the futility one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance. ‘I go to school with Walter,’ I began again. ‘He’s your boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he, sir?’”

After some probing by Scout, Mr. Cunningham reluctantly nods, but still says nothing, so she keeps at it. “‘He’s in my grade,’ I said, ‘and he does right well. He’s a good boy,’ I added, ‘a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won’t you?’” Scout continues to try to make polite conversation, before noticing that everyone is watching her. “I slowly awoke to the fact that I was addressing the entire aggregation,” she observes. “The men were all looking at me, some had their mouths half-open. Atticus had stopped poking at Jem: they were standing together beside Dill. Their attention amounted to fascination. Atticus’s mouth, even, was half-open, an attitude he had once described as uncouth. Our eyes met and he shut it.”

Not one to be the center of attention, and not realizing why she is currently, Scout begins to stress. “I began to feel sweat gathering at the edges of my hair; I could stand anything but a bunch of people looking at me. They were quite still.” But eventually, the silence is broken. “I looked around and up at Mr. Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders. ‘I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,’ he said. Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. ‘Let’s clear out,’ he called. ‘Let’s get going, boys.’” And as quickly and as solemnly as they had come, the men turned around and leave.

The film adaptation of the novel, made in 1962, does a great job of presenting this scene, but there’s just something about the way that Lee describes it in the novel. The way that Scout so effectively, albeit unintentionally, is able to break down the mob mentality and restore an individual identity to one man. And this scene, although fictional, provides a great example of how deindividuation not only happens, but also how it can be broken down.

It’s so easy for members of a physical group such as a mob to lose themselves to it, to become deindividualized and lose all sense of accountability. In the dark of the night, the men in the mob were able to follow the crowd with the intention of doing harm, and it wasn’t until someone pointed out the individual humanity, that the individual identity was restored. Similarly, it’s easy for members of mobs to dress in white robes and masks as the Klu Klux Klan has, or in black clothes and masks as members of ANTIFA have. It’s easy to blend in, to disassociate with who you are outside of the mob, and to take action without fear of being held accountable, and this is particularly true and dangerous when the mob has bad intentions. We know that this happens, and we know through this history or mobs in this country, that this can lead us into dangerous territory. The question we’re left with then is, how do we, on the side of civility, play the role of Scout Finch, and restore individual identity to members of a mob before the real damage is done.

(Image on left taken from Huffington Post. Image on right taken from The Mercury News.)

References:

Donley, M. (2011). Examining the Mob Mentality. Retrieved from http://source.southuniversity.edu/examining-the-mob-mentality-31395.aspx

Kassin, Fein & Markus (2017). Social Psychology, 10^th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Lee, H. (1960). To Kill A Mockingbird. McIntosh and Otis.

Mulligan, R. (Director). (1962). To Kill A Mockingbird [Motion picture]. Universal.