11.09.2024
He is the Rabid Dog in Maycomb
One cannot reason with, nor debate a rabid dog.
How ever Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, visualized that hound she birthed for her book, it might only be a quarter the mad, festering canine that eventually was cast and then performed in the role because the effect of it appearing as it did under the high bright light on a dusty street in Maycomb, Alabama, was far more frightening than the ghostly wind-shaken shrubs on the moonlit night Boo Radley came to Scout’s rescue. At least, that’s my still-chilled recollection, first viewing it on television as a ten-year old. Of course, television has always had frightening things on it.
The rabid dog in Maycomb delivers all it must in Robert Mulligan’s astonishing film, for this dog is death approaching. One soon sees the dread in the faces of the people observing it, as it shivers, shakes, and grizzles with crackling snarls in their direction. In spite of it being at, what still might seem a safe distance, warnings order bystanders to seek immediate safety because those who know about mad dogs understand what this thing is. People have seen this before. They have seen the consequences of a rabid dog coming among them. They have heard about such things. This has happened since earliest times.
People have always seemed to know about the mad dog. They remember it with a loathing, with a need to rend the disgust from themselves, to warn others of its nearing, as it spreads fear, paralysing the weak, the unknowing and the willfully ignorant, leaving them to believe that if they simply stand still, don’t move or make a sound, the mad dog will soon surely pass them by, and be gone…just like that. But that is not how the mad dog operates.
It casts a shadow ahead of itself, working its slobbering mouth of rotten teeth, ptyalism refilling it to overflowing, splattering its poison in the street, barely able to stand, barely able to think, swaying like the drunk Duke, clutching to itself because it is all it knows.
The lawman is all that stands before it, and if given a final inch, this dog will kill the law.
The US has only one chance at redemption: the Flatulant Fanta Führer must not win, must be brought to justice, and must be left to his solitary self—in silence.
TA