Picturing Maycomb County, Alabama 11.23.15

                           

         When I first seen this photo, the first thing I observed was the road and the buildings On page 5 of the hardcover book it says, "...the streets turned to red slop..." The road in the picture reminded me of the road in the book because, from what it looks like, it appears to be clay because the road looks smooth and doesn't appear to have the texture cement would have or have the foundation cement would have. Also on page 5, Scout describes to us how the buildings are founded on the ground. She tells us, "...courthouse sagged in the square." From this sentence I can infer that maybe since the courthouse is sagged, if this is even a literal sentence, that the foundation could be failing. This is shown throughout the picture because, some of the poles that are holding up the overhang are starting to shift sideways.

           I also noticed something else about the road. It is almost vacant! This can relate to Maycomb County because Jean Louise tells us, "people moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it." This  shows in the picture because some people are milling around and are coming in and out of the Grady Lawless & Co. At the edge of the picture, towards the left, there is a cluster of men just standing around, looking as if they are talking.

          While looking at this photo, I began to think that maybe the photographer took this picture to capture the essence of an average day in Greensboro, Alabama. I thought this because, it doesn't look as if it is a big event such as a fair or holiday because the streets are clear of any decorations and the people inside the photo look like they are dresses in regular clothing. After having a possible idea of why the photographer took this picture, I began to compare it to an any day capture of the mainstreets in "*Downtown" Berwyn, Illinois to the 1940's mainstreet in  Greensboro, Alabama. I noticed that in "Downtown" Berwyn, we have cars parked outside the stores on an everyday basis, like the cars in the photo above. However, one thing that was different was that in the photograph, there are people milling in and out of the stores, at this moment you will most likely not see people clustered outside in front of stores like you do above.