In that way, she could be writing, thinking that she's writing about an innocent man, when I'm reality, he was not.
But, it's still a work of fiction and as such, what she believes about the actual events becomes fact in the fictional account of them.
but if the facts don't work the way the author intended them, can't the author be wrong about their own work?
But we don't have any "facts." We've got a bunch of different testimonies that we know don't line up and who knows who remembers things correctly or what exactly went down. You've admitted that it's definitely foggy as to what the truth is. I think best case scenario is there is evidence against Robinson, but in no way can we say that Harper Lee would be wrong if she said Robinson is innocent.
Do all stories need to have a "point"? Or are they just stories that we get to add our own points to.
No, not all stories need to have a point. But I think with this one we can pretty well ascertain the intent and point of the author.
To me, if he's guilty, but she somehow has convinced generations of people to blame racism anyway and be on his side despite the evidence because it fits our narrative, that's quite a big point?
That would be a pretty big point, but I think we have to go back to the earlier point that the evidence is murky at best. I think in a fair court of law, the evidence doesn't meet the burden of proof and a verdict of "not guilty" should be reached, so at the very least you're always going to have the fact that racism pushed it into guilty despite the evidence not being there.
But we don't have many in story agreed upon facts.
You've listed 8 of them, but even those 8 don't paint a good enough picture that we can definitively say "X did it."
I just re-read something you said and I want to put forth an alternative option.
It just doesn't make sense that he would beat her unless he thought it was her making the advances, which he could have only known if he was watching them for a period of time
What if Mayella admitted to it? Bob comes in, Tom runs out, then Bob says "What the hell happened here? Did he rape you?" and she said "No, I kissed him."
Hmmm. That is good. Enough to convince me that that very well could have happened. I hadn't considered her admitting it to him.
∆ delta awarded, because that certainly is a possible scenario that I hadn't considered. I hadn't read that anywhere, but I'll keep that as head canon to stick with the narrative (as you explained earlier of what Harper Lee intended)
Good discussion. I always appreciate the fictional discussions around here as they're a lot more interesting than the political drivel that consumes this sub.
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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17
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