64 pages • 2 hours read
Lynda RutledgeMockingbird Summer
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Mockingbird
The mockingbird provides an overarching symbol of the novel’s intertextuality. The mockingbird in the book’s title alludes to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, illustrating the thematic connection between the two literary texts. Lee’s novel plays a critical role in the narrative that contributes to the theme of Developing Consciousness Through Friendship and Literature. The reading of Lee’s book as a seminal literary text of the 1960s undergirds the protagonist’s personal growth and expanding understanding of racism and social inequality. Lynda Rutledge’s narrative illustrates how literature can challenge people’s perceptions as America’s reaction to Lee’s novel differs significantly from Corky’s due to the vast differences in their experience and knowledge of racism. The stakes of racialized violence—which are extremely high for America and her family—are low enough for Corky that they’ve largely escaped her notice. Corky’s privilege allows her to see To Kill a Mockingbird as a book that opens her eyes to racism, while its depiction of racialized violence merely traumatizes America.
As a symbol, the mockingbird also signifies Corky’s loss of innocence as she confronts the reality of racism. When Papa Cal urges her to kill the snake he senses in his yard, Corky hesitates, recalling her first experience with shooting. Papa Cal taught her to use a gun and told her to target a flock of birds. Corky pointed and shot them but discovered a mockingbird among the birds: “There among the dead crows was also a dead mockingbird. And seeing that, she couldn’t keep the tears from coming” (167). Papa Cal criticizes her for maintaining a “tender heart,” signifying her childhood innocence. The death of the mockingbird in Corky’s past foreshadows Corky’s emerging social consciousness and confrontation with racial hatred through her friendship with America.
The Railroad Tracks
Rutledge uses the railroad tracks as a recurrent symbol in the text of High Cotton’s racial divide. The tracks literally divide the small town of High Cotton between the Northside, where the white residents primarily live, and the Southside, where the Black community lives. From the towns’ founding, the track “offered a convenient little dividing line for everyone to live ‘separate but equal’” (7). The prominence of the railroad tracks in Rutledge’s plot emphasizes the impact of segregation in the lives of the characters. From Corky’s perspective, the town’s Southside is an unknown world. Because of her friendship with America, Corky crosses the railroad tracks for the first time when Mack drives America home. Her visit to the Southside allows Corky to connect the racial segregation of the town with its class division as the Southside’s housing is “the same size and […] the same color” while the roads are “dirt.” Corky’s decision to cross the railroad tracks alone to apologize to America marks a critical step in her coming-of-age journey. Corky’s defiance of segregation laws, “going against parental and community norms” (172) to connect with her friend, foreshadows the eventual collapse of segregation laws and future integration. For Corky, the Jim Crow laws that govern her town remain a constant reminder of the country’s legacy of racism. Ultimately, the railroad tracks emphasize the artificiality of divisive lines between people and the social construction of racial discrimination.
Snakes and the Truck
Rutledge establishes snakes and the truck as recurrent and interconnected symbols for racism. The various appearances of the strange truck outside Corky’s house creates an ominous narrative tone as Corky’s connection to America grows. Corky first observes a mysterious “old truck” circling her house for several nights following the integration of the Baptist softball team. Rutledge reinforces the menacing motif when Corky’s dog smells truck fumes in the air and senses what is “coming.” Rutledge reinforces the connection between the truck and racial hatred when the school bully threatens Corky about finding a “burning cross in [her] front yard” (139) and references the Ku Klux Klan—an interaction that’s interrupted by Tommy telling Corky he’s seen suspicious vehicles in her neighborhood. Ultimately, Rutledge reveals the passengers of the truck to be two mysterious figures, who attack America and shoot Mack in the novel’s climax, manifesting their racial hate.
Rutledge uses the Christian symbolism of the snake to identify racism with “evil.” During Corky’s visit with her grandfather, Papa Cal hears a rattlesnake in his yard just as Corky hears the strange truck from her window. Papa Cal orders Corky to kill the snake “before it settles under the house” (166). Because Corky can’t bring herself to do it, the snake bites Papa Cal, alluding to the stakes of leaving racial hatred unchecked in the community. When Pastor Pete, the white Baptist minister, talks about the attack against America and Mack in his final sermon, he calls the assault “Evil incarnate” and emphasizes that racial prejudice is “in the service of Evil” (260), in direct opposition to Christian faith and goodwill. He references the Biblical story of creation in which Eve is tempted by Satan in the form of a serpent, saying that because the world is “fallen,” it also full of “Evil” that people must confront and oppose. Reverend Washington, the Black Baptist minister, also evokes the Christian symbolism of the snake when he tells Corky that racists are “just snakes, that [choose] to do wrong” (265).
