When the Mockingbird Sang
on letting the dead bury the dead
An Apology About Comments: I’ve gotten several emails expressing impatience with my current policy, wherein comments are open on weekends but closed during the workweek. Y’all, I’m really sorry. I made comments a perk of paid subs, and it sucks that they’re closed a lot. I intend to bring them back but for now I’m still having MAJORLY INTENSE ANXIETY at my new job. It’s a great job and I strongly suspect that in a year I’ll love it beyond words. The learning curve is just testing me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. Pray for me; I don’t think anyone’s listening, but I could be wrong and maybe it’ll help. Comments will be on during the workweek once my anxiety is closer to something like my baseline.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is an enduring American classic. This essay delves into the novel in some depth, so if you haven’t read it but plan to, consider this your spoiler warning.
Many readers first encounter the book in school, though it has been banned in various jurisdictions due to its use of the racial slur commonly referred to as the n-word.1
Despite this, the novel’s exploration of morality, justice, and human complexity remains profoundly relevant. Toward the end of the story, there is a pivotal conflict between the Maycomb County Sheriff, Heck Tate, and Atticus Finch, the narrator’s father.
My purpose here is to examine that conflict and determine whether I believe Sheriff Tate or Atticus was right. As I begin, I’m unsure of my conclusion. The clash pits two steadfastly principled men against each other. Each believes he knows the right thing to do and refuses to back down. Ultimately, Sheriff Tate’s authority as the law gives him the final word—he assumes responsibility and makes the decision.
Was the Sheriff right? Or was Atticus?
This question resurfaced for me during therapy, connected to an unresolved event in my past: the suicide of someone I loved, trusted, and confided in. I’ve long wrestled with what he might have been thinking and whether I played any role in his decision.
In an earlier session, my therapist said something that has haunted me: “You must learn to let the dead bury the dead.”
He meant that I need to accept the impossibility of resolution and let that acceptance become, itself, my resolution. Healing, for me, requires unconditional self-forgiveness—whether I was 1% at fault or 99%—and then letting it go.
My therapist was right. (That bastard is always right.)
But his words made me reflect deeply on the notion of “letting the dead bury the dead.”
And that brought me back to To Kill a Mockingbird.
A Synopsis To Set the Stage
The story is told by Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. Her brother Jeremy “Jem” and she are growing up in Maycomb County, Alabama, during the Depression. Their mother is dead. Their father, Atticus, is an attorney. Atticus is a man of deep principle and commitment to virtue, profoundly concerned with being a role model his children can safely emulate.
The Ewell family, like the Finches, has a widowed father and a dead mother. The father, Bob, is a monstrous drunkard and regularly abuses his children. He abuses his eldest daughter, Mayella, sexually, and the others physically.
The Robinson family, Tom and Helen and their children, are black in an era when that was all-encompassing and fully defined their possibilities. They are hard-working, respectable, religious people who do their best to mind their own business and live by their faith and morals. Tom regularly walks by the Ewell family house on his way to and from his job picking cotton.
The Radley family are neighbors of the Finches. Arthur, known to neighborhood children as “Boo,” was brutalized by his now-deceased father as a teenager, so severely that he became an agoraphobe. He hasn’t left his house in over twenty years at the time of the story.
The story gives many small evidences that Boo Radley pays attention to neighborhood children, particularly Scout and Jem, though he is never seen doing so.
Mayella Ewell accuses Tom Robinson of rape when her father walks in on her initiating a physical encounter with Tom, who tries desperately to gently reject her advances. Tom is charged with rape, which was a capital crime in the 1930s. Atticus is Tom’s defense attorney. He loses, which was inevitable—at the time and place the novel is set—the moment Mayella opened her mouth to accuse him. But Atticus puts on a case that definitely proves the truth, and the fact that he got Bob Ewell’s sexual abuse of his daughter spoken of, in open court, profoundly humiliates Bob Ewell. As a drunken coward well accustomed to abusing children, he decides to take revenge by harming Scout and Jem.
The Conflict Between Sheriff Tate and Atticus Finch
At the climax of To Kill a Mockingbird, Bob Ewell ambushes Scout and Jem as they walk home in the dark from a school event. Armed with a knife, he intends to kill them.
Boo Radley, ever watchful from the shadows, rushes to their defense and kills Ewell. Although this is not stated outright, the narrative strongly implies it, and readers are meant to infer the truth. The ambiguity lies not in what happened but in how the surviving characters choose to frame it.
During the attack, Jem’s arm is badly broken, and Scout is roughed up. She is likely saved from greater harm by her bulky Halloween costume, which acts as an impromptu shield around her vital organs. After the attack, a doctor is called to treat Jem, setting his arm and sedating him, while the adults grapple with the moral and legal implications of what has transpired.
Scout, Atticus, Boo Radley, and Sheriff Heck Tate gather to recount the events and decide what to do next. Initially, Atticus believes, based partly on Scout’s traumatized account, that Jem may have killed Bob Ewell in self-defense.
A man of unwavering principle, Atticus insists there must be a public trial. “Let the county come and bring sandwiches,” he declares. Atticus is steadfast in his belief that truth and justice must be upheld, even if it means exposing his own son to scrutiny.
For Atticus, this is about more than the law—it’s about being the moral anchor his children need. He understands himself as their parent, but more than that, as their father — as the source of moral refuge, the place they retreat to learn what the right thing to do is and to be aided in finding the courage to do it — even if it hurts.
Even if it means a real sacrifice.
Sheriff Tate, however, is adamant: Jem did not kill Bob Ewell. According to Tate, Ewell fell on his own knife. The sheriff’s insistence and the careful way he constructs this false narrative suggest his determination to protect Boo Radley, whose heroic act saved the children but who would be devastated by public attention.
Their argument goes on, with Atticus preferring to put Jem through a trial, short-term pain for the long-term benefit of integrity.
The sheriff and Atticus go back and forth, with the sheriff stubbornly determined to make Atticus understand the necessity of the narrative that Bob Ewell fell on his knife. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
Atticus is just as determined to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, though he takes, in his overly stressed state, awhile to understand that the truth is not what he first believes it to be. He goes on, for much of their conflict, believing that his son killed Ewell.
Finally, in frustration, the Sheriff violates a major social code, shouting and swearing in front of a child. But this is too important to walk away, collect himself, and try again. It has to be settled, and it has to be settled right now.
Realizing he’s not going to convince Atticus, he finally pulls rank:
Before he leaves, he softens just enough to explain himself — more clearly than he has so far. Boo Radley is right there, and he doesn’t want to humiliate the man further by being so explicit that he’s protecting a grown man from facing the consequences of his actions. But he has empathy for both Atticus’s trauma in nearly losing his children and in the fact that Atticus must now explain to his children that sometimes telling a lie is the right thing to do. So he explains further:
Sheriff Tate’s Morality
The last thing the Sheriff says before leaving is one of my favorite lines from this book — one that I’ve thought about on a thousand solitary walks in the woods.
Why does this line resonate in my head so deeply?
Sheriff Tate possesses a rare and unflinching self-awareness. He sees himself with striking clarity: he is not a particularly good man. But he is a man who understands his role and the limits of his power.
While he holds ultimate responsibility as sheriff, his actual authority is fragile, constrained by the social structures and moral hypocrisies of Maycomb. He couldn’t even stop his own wife, let alone the church ladies, from descending on Boo Radley with angel food cakes to thank him for ridding the town of Bob Ewell.
Tate knows this about himself and his situation. He accepts that while he carries the burden of responsibility, his influence ends the moment an arrest is made. Yet, instead of lamenting his lack of authority, he wields the power he does have with precision, crafting a lie to serve what he believes is the greater good.
His decision is not born of virtue, but of pragmatism—doing the wrong thing for the right reason in service of the highest justice.
What makes Sheriff Tate compelling is not that he is virtuous, but that he owns his decision entirely. He doesn’t pretend it’s noble or driven by lofty ideals.
Instead, it’s pragmatic: a deliberate choice to do what he can while sidestepping what he cannot. And he owns it with total self-possession, accepting full responsibility for the outcome.
“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.”
Atticus’s Struggle
Earlier in the story, Scout and Jem receive their first firearms from their uncle. Atticus, ever mindful of the lessons he imparts, warns them, “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” It’s the only time he uses the word “sin” with his children, making a memorable impression with the gravity of the statement.
In the Finch family’s moral universe, killing a mockingbird is deeply wrong because mockingbirds exist solely to bring beauty into the world. They sing purely for the enjoyment of others, harming no one and nothing. They are symbols of innocence, creatures that do only good.
This lesson resonates again in the novel’s closing moments, as Atticus grapples with the ethical complexities of Sheriff Tate’s decision to shield Boo Radley from public scrutiny.
Atticus struggles to reconcile his role in what is undeniably a cover-up—a lie—with his complete powerlessness to see the truth told.
Yet the one with the actual power to decide, Sheriff Tate, has decided — and it is solely his decision — that exposing Boo would be akin to killing a mockingbird: a needless act of cruelty against someone who has done nothing but protect others.
The moral dilemma pushes Atticus to balance his belief in the moral absolute of telling the truth with the nuanced realities of a more complex ideal of justice, that held by the less-virtuous, but more-powerful man, the sheriff.
It is a sobering, serious moment that ties the Finch family’s philosophy to the larger question of what it means to protect the innocent in a fallen world.
Atticus accepts that his necessary priority — remaining the moral refuge for his children — is met. The decision made and the consequences settled, the scene finally turns to give attention to the actual hero: Arthur “Boo” Radley.
Boo Radley, who overcame mind-shattering trauma and found, for him, super-human courage: enough to kill a man and save Atticus’s two children.
Who Was Right?
In writing this, I think I have clarified my own position.
Well, sort of.
From a 2024 perspective, Atticus was right.
Cover-ups and conspiracies erode the social fabric, damage trust, undermine commonly agreed-upon standards of morality, and make a mockery of the law. Despite understanding his reasons for cooperating with the cover-up, his children do know what happened. They may never lose faith in his love or compassion, but they will inevitably lose a measure of faith—even just a little—in his integrity. The possibility that their father might participate in deception, even for compassionate, understandable, and arguably justified reasons, is now something they will carry with them forever.
Of course, they would have started considering such complexities eventually; even children of the best fathers must one day internalize values like courage, morality, and integrity for themselves.
There comes a point when the need to feel, and to hear at least occasionally, that you matter deeply to someone—truly and profoundly matter, that their world would be impoverished without you—either fades as you outgrow it or lingers, leaving you tiptoeing around the void of that unmet need. Leaving you always in danger of falling into that hole.
For Atticus’s children, who had been reminded daily, both explicitly and implicitly, that they mattered, outgrowing that need would inevitably shift their view of him. They would begin to see their father not just as a moral refuge, but as a flawed human being.
When that day came, the realization that one of the defining events of their childhoods—perhaps the most significant after their mother’s death—was the day their father participated in a lie would surely force them to re-evaluate everything, even if only temporarily.
That’s a steep price to pay just to shield their neighbors from the truth, and to enable Boo Radley to remain a reclusive victim of his own trauma.
But the story wasn’t set in 2024, was it?
It was set in 1935.
By 1935 standards, Sheriff Tate was right.
The institutions of 1935 were morally flawed, upholding actual systemic racism and discrimination. They lacked the complexity and nuance of today’s pluralistic culture. Morality was painted in stark black and white, in every way and on every level.
By 1935 standards, where everyone pretended not to see the plainly obvious:
—that Bob Ewell was a monster who beat his children and sexually abused his daughter.
—that the late Mr. Radley was a tyrant who turned his son into a living ghost. They called Boo “shy” and left it at that.
—that Tom Robinson was an innocent man, falsely accused by a victimized young woman who made the wrong choice for reasons as unforgivable as they were understandable.
In that milieu, Sheriff Tate’s decision simply added one more polite fiction—one more justifiable than any of the others.
His fiction saved a hero from being punished for his heroism. He used what little power he had to serve a greater justice: rewarding Arthur Radley for his extraordinary act of courage; not with accolades or public praise, but with the far greater reward of being left alone.
Boo Radley risked his life to save two children from a monstrous, drunken coward. It was an act of courage, justice, and decency. He deserved to return to his solitary life and the fragile peace it afforded him.
So, given the story’s 1935 setting, I think I have to side with Sheriff Tate. He did the right thing.
I don’t like this.
It doesn’t make me feel comfortable or soothed. It bothers me.
And it should, I think.
Polite fictions are still fictions, and building a society on them—even a little—should bother us all.
And yet, despite my discomfort, I can’t escape the conclusion that Sheriff Tate’s choice, within the 1935 world of To Kill a Mockingbird, was the best of a bad lot of options.
Perhaps this is what makes the story endure. It doesn’t offer easy answers or neat resolutions. It forces us to wrestle with the tension between morality and pragmatism, between the values of truth and mercy.
Sheriff Tate’s decision was imperfect at best and morally repugnant at worst.
Most human decisions are somewhere on that spectrum, but this one is interesting for how powerfully an argument could be made to place it on one end or the other.
Whatever you would decide in placing it, it was born of compassion: a decision that one man, who correctly recognized himself as not a very good man, made to do what he could to protect the vulnerable.
Ultimately, Boo Radley got what he deserved: the freedom to remain in the shadows, burdened as little as possible by a world that would never understand him.
And the Finch children, despite their loss of youthful innocence, gained something at least potentially valuable: the ability to grapple with the complexities of right and wrong, even when the answers aren’t clear.
That’s the price of growing up, isn’t it?
The realization that life is not a math problem.
Sometimes there just isn’t a clear, easy answer.
Absolute certainty is the provence of children, no matter how much we grown-ups might enjoy finding it again.
I don’t believe in giving that word mystical power and will use it when appropriate — as it would be in discussing its use in this book. In fact, I said it earlier today, discussing the book with my therapist. But saying it in a Substack post may cause this email not to be delivered due to spam or other filters, so I’m using “the n-word” here.
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Mockingbird is by far one of my favorite novels ever written. There are a couple of things that have always stood out to me:
1. After Scout walks Boo Radley back to his home and says goodbye forever, she turns around and suddenly sees the world the way Boo saw it. She can see all the escapades she had with her brother from where Boo, in his broken and childlike way, had been watching them for years. She doesn't understand him completely, of course, but the novel presents the idea that if you can just see something from the point of view of another, there is power to that.
This is, I believe, Atticus's great gift. He can even see things from the point of view of George Ewell. It doesn't make Ewell any better a human being, but Atticus can feel sorrow and compassion for the awfulness. It's also powerful to me that Atticus can feel the compassion and not let himself be manipulated. Atticus knows his defense of Tom Robinson will destroy the Ewells, he doesn't relish it, but he still goes through his defense with full force. Compassion doesn't mean let bad people get away with it.
2. I feel like the case against Tom Robinson is one of the most vivid descriptions of how badly tribalism makes us go wrong. Nobody likes the Ewells. They are horrid people. The entire town knows how awful they are. And when the truth clearly comes out in the trial, the town's full disgust is unleashed. Though Tom Robinson is a black man, I always felt that the town mostly respected him. He worked hard. He did good things. If you asked the average person whether they liked Tom Robinson or George Ewell better, I got the feeling they'd all say Robinson (with the qualifier that he was a Negro).
And he was innocent of the rape accusation. Obviously innocent. Everybody knew he was innocent. I never interpreted of the "guilty" verdict as a statement that the town didn't believe Tom Robinson. Rather, the town was powerless to declare him innocent because of the strict, unwritten but always accepted code that whenever a dispute came between a black man and a white man, the whites had to side with the white man--even when that white man is despised and repugnant. The only way to let Robinson go free was to break this code, and the community simply couldn't do it. It is their great sin in the novel.
Great article! Coming to terms with the grey not only of the world "out there" but our own parents and ourselves is difficult but necessary to claim agency in the world. I'm working on something similar with the relationship between justice, mercy, and accountability. Tricky stuff all around. Sometimes I think there's enough applicable content on substack to make a whole curriculum for history, ethics, civics, etc!