Comments on: Texts in humanities classes overplay white narrative https://gunnoracle.com/22064/forum/texts-in-humanities-classes-overplay-white-narrative/ Official Student Newspaper of Henry M. Gunn High School Mon, 13 Feb 2023 05:22:25 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 By: Lucy https://gunnoracle.com/22064/forum/texts-in-humanities-classes-overplay-white-narrative/#comment-8883 Sat, 02 Apr 2022 13:08:26 +0000 https://gunnoracle.com/?p=22064#comment-8883 *Is* Atticus Finch presented as “saving” Tom Robinson?

Most obviously, Tom ends up dead (so definitely not saved) — just as happened in the real-life cases upon which TKAM is loosely based. The most Atticus achieves for Tom is that he winds up shot rather than lynched.

But also, it’s clear in the book that, although he never entirely gives up hope, Atticus knows throughout (although his daughter Scout does not realise until late in the narrative) that there’s only ever at best a very slim chance of Tom’s survival, in spite of his obvious innocence, because of the way that the cards are stacked against him because of his race.

It is very definitely a story of growing up as a White person in the segregated South and it shouldn’t push Black voices from that era out of the curriculum. But I don’t see how it’s a White Savior narrative.

]]>