In To Kill A Mockingbird, Mr. Underwood equates Tom Robinson’s death to the killing of a songbird; in doing so, he codems the treatment of Tom as cruel, but also depolitizeses disability by ignoring the structural inequality of disability in an ableist society. Alison Kafer argues disability has been removed from realm of politics, which leads to a loss of power that can enact change. As a result, the ablist interpretation of disability is seen as common sense. Thus, rather than striving to understand how the lack of accommodations disabled individuals, people center their attention on the disability itself and what they interpret the person to be losing.
Such attention is vital in a context in which, as Susan Schweik notes, disability-based discrimination and prejudice are often condemned not as a marker of structural inequality but of cruelty or insensitivity; this kind of rhetoric “sidesteps the reality of social injustice, reducing it to a question of compassion and charitable feelings” (Kafer 10).
Said mindset results in feelings of sympathy, which innately dehumanizes people with disabilities because it reduces them to their disability in the eyes of others. For example, the novel describes Mr. Underwood as a bitter man; however, when he hears of Tom’s death he calls it sinful, not because Tom’s only crime is being an African American, but because of his disability. In his mind, killing a person with a disability is the same as killing a songbird. Not only does he attribute Tom’s disability as animalistic, Mrs. Maudie states the reason it is a sin to kill a mockingbird is because they can only sing. “They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us” (Lee 103). Mrs. Maudie’s emphasis on what songbirds don’t do parallels the ablist focus on the limitations of an individual’s disability; therfourth, when Mr. Underwood alludes to Tom being like a songbird, it has the underlying implication that Tom is only capable of simple tasks such as singing and nothing else due to his physical impairment. Tom is not only discriminated against because of his disability, his mental capacity is brought into question as well and his ability to contribute to the working class. The comparison of Tom to a songbird aligns with the ablist notion that people with physical disabilities or deformities are also mentally incapacitated and incapable of being a productive member of society. Additionally, Mr. Underwood does not acknowledge that if it is not for Tom’s disability, he would have survived. According to Atticus, the guards at the jail believe there is a chance Tom could have escaped the prison. “They said if he’d two good arms he’d make it, he was moving that fast” (Lee 268). The guard’s attributes Tom’s death to his disability; however, Tom’s lack of two arms is only a disability if he is not accommodated. It is not that Tom is incapable of escaping because he has the athletic ability to do so. If the fence is more accessible he could have escaped; of course, it is unrealistic to expect a prison to accommodate a prisoner in their escape. However, it is highly unlikely the prison provides accommodations to Tom while he is in their custody.
Word Count: 544
I pledge: Olivia Bridges
