figurines d'encoûtement
Aug. 6th, 2006 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyryI have never seen the film To Kill a Mockingbird properly, just bits and pieces.
This morning I saw another bit.
The two children were looking at an old tree in their neighbor’s yard. They noticed that something was placed in a hollow within it and saw that there were two hand-carved wooden dolls. They took them out and examined them and concluded that they were meant to be representations of themselves. Just then the neighbor came out, a rather mean-looking old man. The boy evidently had hidden the dolls behind his back and the man did not notice them. He glared at them and proceeded to block the hollow up with cement.
It seemed obvious to me what had happened.
Because of the general animosity toward Atticus Finch over the trial, this marginal old had made an attack against Finch through his children. Using the techniques of folk magic he had attempted to place a curse on them.
Many such dolls hidden away in strange places—buried under doorways, thrown down wells, in graves—have been found by archaeologists. The technique was used in Ancient Babylon through Roman times. There are many examples of it in medieval times too, but I know those less well. Texts show that the curses not infrequently concerned legal cases. It would in no way surprise me that this little ritual had survived in folk magic and made its way into the film-maker’s consciousness.
I mentioned this to my wife, who has taught the book (which I have never read) many times. She had no idea what I was talking about. The dolls had been placed there as a gift for the children by the mysterious Robert Duval (no idea how to spell his character name)—it was only a coïncidence that they were discovered seconds before the neighbor began his horticultural work.
Strange that the scene could fit so completely a pattern that it had nothing to do with. But that is the very sort of thing that gives such life to witch-beliefs.
This morning I saw another bit.
The two children were looking at an old tree in their neighbor’s yard. They noticed that something was placed in a hollow within it and saw that there were two hand-carved wooden dolls. They took them out and examined them and concluded that they were meant to be representations of themselves. Just then the neighbor came out, a rather mean-looking old man. The boy evidently had hidden the dolls behind his back and the man did not notice them. He glared at them and proceeded to block the hollow up with cement.
It seemed obvious to me what had happened.
Because of the general animosity toward Atticus Finch over the trial, this marginal old had made an attack against Finch through his children. Using the techniques of folk magic he had attempted to place a curse on them.
Many such dolls hidden away in strange places—buried under doorways, thrown down wells, in graves—have been found by archaeologists. The technique was used in Ancient Babylon through Roman times. There are many examples of it in medieval times too, but I know those less well. Texts show that the curses not infrequently concerned legal cases. It would in no way surprise me that this little ritual had survived in folk magic and made its way into the film-maker’s consciousness.
I mentioned this to my wife, who has taught the book (which I have never read) many times. She had no idea what I was talking about. The dolls had been placed there as a gift for the children by the mysterious Robert Duval (no idea how to spell his character name)—it was only a coïncidence that they were discovered seconds before the neighbor began his horticultural work.
Strange that the scene could fit so completely a pattern that it had nothing to do with. But that is the very sort of thing that gives such life to witch-beliefs.
