A Kantian view on To Kill a Mockingbird
“Jem, Jem, help me, Jem!”
Something crushed the chicken wire around me. Metal ripped on metal and I fell to the ground and rolled as far as I could, floundering to escape my wire prison.

Atticus spoke. “He can’t hear you, Scout, he’s out like a light. He was coming around, but Dr. Reynolds put him out again.”
“Yes sir.” I retreated. Jem’s room was large and square. Aunt Alexandra was sitting in a rocking-chair by the fireplace. The man who brought Jem in was
standing in a corner, leaning against the wall. He was some countryman I did not know. He had probably been at the pageant, and was in the vicinity when it happened. He must have heard our screams and come running.

Aunt Alexandra got up and reached for the mantelpiece. Mr. Tate rose, but she
declined assistance. For once in his life, Atticus’s instinctive courtesy failed him:
he sat where he was.
Somehow, I could think of nothing but Mr. Bob Ewell saying he’d get Atticus if it
took him the rest of his life. Mr. Ewell almost got him, and it was the last thing he
did.
“Are you sure?” Atticus said bleakly.
“He’s dead all right,” said Mr. Tate. “He’s good and dead. He won’t hurt these
children again.”


“Is it all right if I leave?” she asked. “I’m just one person too many in here. I’ll be in my room if you want me, Atticus.” Aunt Alexandra went to the door, but she stopped and turned. “Atticus, I had a feeling about this tonight—I—this is my
fault,” she began. “I should have—” Mr. Tate held up his hand. “You go ahead, Miss Alexandra, I know it’s been a shock to you.  And don’t you fret yourself about anything—why, if we followed our feelings all the time we’d be like cats chasin‘ their tails.""

“Then all of a sudden somethin‘ grabbed me an’ mashed my costume… think I ducked on the ground… heard a tusslin‘ under the tree sort of… they were bammin’ against the trunk, sounded like. Jem found me and started pullin‘ me toward the road. Some—Mr. Ewell yanked him down, I reckon. They tussled some more and then there was this funny noise—Jem hollered…” I stopped. That was Jem’s arm.“Anyway, Jem hollered and
I didn’t hear him any more an‘ the next thing—Mr. Ewell was tryin’ to squeeze me to death, I reckon… then somebody yanked Mr. Ewell down. Jem must have got up, I guess. That’s all I know…”



I looked from his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants; my eyes traveled up his thin frame to his torn denim shirt. His face was as white as his hands, but for a shadow on his jutting chin. His cheeks were thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow, almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were so colorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin, almost feathery on top of his head. When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange small spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor’s image blurred with my sudden tears.
“Hey, Boo,” I said.


“Won’t you have a seat, Mr. Arthur? This rocking-chair’s nice and comfortable.”
My small fantasy about him was alive again: he would be sitting on the porch…
right pretty spell we’re having, isn’t it, Mr. Arthur?
Yes, a right pretty spell. Feeling slightly unreal, I led him to the chair farthest
from Atticus and Mr. Tate. It was in deep shadow.  Boo would feel more
comfortable in the dark.

“Of course it was clear-cut self defense, but I’ll have to go to the office and hunt up—”
“Mr. Finch, do you think Jem killed Bob Ewell? Do you think that?”
“You heard what Scout said, there’s no doubt about it. She said Jem got up and yanked him off her—he probably got hold of Ewell’s knife somehow in the dark… we’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Mis-ter Finch, hold on,” said Mr. Tate. “Jem never stabbed Bob Ewell.”
Atticus was silent for a moment. He looked at Mr. Tate as if he appreciated what he said. But Atticus shook his head.
“Heck, it’s mighty kind of you and I know you’re doing it from that good heart of yours, but don’t start anything like that.”
Mr. Tate got up and went to the edge of the porch. He spat into the shrubbery, then thrust his hands into his hip pockets and faced Atticus. “Like what?” he said.
“I’m sorry if I spoke sharply, Heck,” Atticus said simply, “but nobody’s hushing this up. I don’t live that way.”
Mr. Tate’s voice was quiet, but his boots were planted so solidly on the porch floorboards it seemed that they grew there. A curious contest, the nature of whicheluded me, was developing between my father and the sheriff.
It was Atticus’s turn to get up and go to the edge of the porch. He said, “H’rm,”and spat dryly into the yard. He put his hands in his pockets and faced Mr. Tate.
“Heck, you haven’t said it, but I know what you’re thinking. Thank you for it. Jean Louise—” he turned to me. “You said Jem yanked Mr. Ewell off you?”
“Yes sir, that’s what I thought… I—”
“See there, Heck? Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don’t want my boy starting out with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring sandwiches. I don’t want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don’t want anybody saying,
‘Jem Finch… his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that.’ Sooner we get this over with the better.”
“Mr. Finch,” Mr. Tate said stolidly, “Bob Ewell fell on his knife. He killed
himself.”
Atticus walked to the corner of the porch. He looked at the wisteria vine. In his
own way, I thought, each was as stubborn as the other. I wondered who would
give in first. Atticus’s stubbornness was quiet and rarely evident, but in some
ways he was as set as the Cunninghams. Mr. Tate’s was unschooled and blunt, but
it was equal to my father’s.
“Heck,” Atticus’s back was turned. “If this thing’s hushed up it’ll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him… if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t want to lose him and Scout, because
they’re all I’ve got.”
“Mr. Finch.” Mr. Tate was still planted to the floorboards. “Bob Ewell fell on his knife. I can prove it.”
Atticus wheeled around. His hands dug into his pockets. “Heck, can’t you even try to see it my way? You’ve got children of your own, but I’m older than you. When mine are grown I’ll be an old man if I’m still around, but right now I’m—if they don’t trust me they won’t trust anybody. Jem and Scout know what happened. If they hear of me saying downtown something different happened—
Heck, I won’t have them any more. I can’t live one way in town and another way in my home.”
Mr. Tate rocked on his heels and said patiently,  “He’d flung Jem down, he stumbled over a root under that tree and—look, I can show you.”



Mr. Tate closed the knife and jammed it back in his pocket. “Scout is eight years old,” he said. “She was too scared to know exactly what went on.”
“You’d be surprised,” Atticus said grimly.
“I’m not sayin‘ she made it up, I’m sayin’ she was too scared to know exactly what happened. It was mighty dark out there, black as ink. ‘d take somebody mighty used to the dark to make a competent witness…”
“I won’t have it,” Atticus said softly.
“God damn it, I’m not thinking of Jem!”Mr. Tate’s boot hit the floorboards so hard the lights in Miss Maudie’s bedroom
went on. Miss Stephanie Crawford’s lights went on. Atticus and Mr. Tate looked
across the street, then at each other.
"...To my way of thinkin’, Mr. Finch, taking the one man who’s done you and this town a great service an‘ draggin’ him with his shy ways into the limelight—to me, that’s a sin. It’s a sin and I’m not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man, it’d be different. But not this man, Mr.Finch.”
Mr. Tate was trying to dig a hole in the floor with the toe of his boot. He pulled his nose, then he massaged his left arm. “I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I’m
still sheriff of Maycomb County and Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Good night, sir.”

“Scout,” he said, “Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?”
Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. “Yes sir, I understand,” I reassured him. “Mr. Tate was right.”
Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’d be sort of like shootin‘ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?”
Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. “Thank you for my children,
Arthur,” he said.