Should We Be Sympathetic Towards Lee?
There’s been a lot of discussion in class recently about Lee’s character. Today we ended our class with the question to ponder: Are we sympathetic to Lee? Some people were saying that they feel bad for Lee because he can’t do anything right. Throughout the story he always seems sort of like a failure and this brings some humor to the plot but also makes Lee more of a three-dimensional person. One could argue that we should be sympathetic to Lee because he is left in the dark for the assassination plot and is being used by the other conspirators. He seems almost harmless in his personality because he screws up most things he tries to do. Also some bad things happen to Lee to make the reader feel empathy towards him. We see that Lee was bullied as a child and later was sexually assaulted by David Ferrie. Lee also lacks a strong role model and all of the father figures he looks up to end up manipulating, betraying, or hurting him. It is also possible to feel bad for Lee because he exp...