‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’
A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man’s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.
Author: Nelle Harper Lee (April 18, 1926 - February 19, 2016)
- 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was published in 1960.- It is deemed as a 'classic of modern American literature'.
- The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbours, as well as the event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
- The novel was inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.
- Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, practiced law and served in the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938. He once defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both clients, a father and son, were hanged.
- The 1931 landmark Scottsboro Boys interracial rape case may also have helped to shape Lee's social conscience.
- In the book, Scout's friend Dill, is inspired by Lee's childhood friend and neighbour Truman Capote.
- Truman Capote, on the character of Boo Radley, mentions that "He was a real man, and lived just down the road from us. We used to go and get those things out of the trees. Everything she wrote about is absolutely true."
- Her other book 'Go Set a Watchman' was originally the first draft of 'To Kill a Mockingbird', but was later re-drafted into a sequel of the book.
- The book was adapted into an Oscar winning film in 1962 by director Robert Mulligan, with a screenplay by Horton Foote.
Plot Summary:
The story takes place during three years (1933–35) of the Great Depression in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama, the seat of Maycomb County. It focuses on six-year-old Jean Louise Finch (Scout), who lives with her older brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill, who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt each summer. The three children are terrified of, and fascinated by, their neighbor, the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo, and few of them have seen him for many years. The children feed one another's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. After two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone leaves them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, he never appears in person.
Judge Taylor appoints Atticus to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus's actions, calling him a "nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. This danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's perspective.
Atticus does not want Jem and Scout to be present at Tom Robinson's trial. No seat is available on the main floor, so by invitation of the Rev. Sykes, Jem, Scout, and Dill watch from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that the accusers—Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, the town drunk—are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella made sexual advances toward Tom, and that her father caught her and beat her. Despite significant evidence of Tom's innocence, the jury convicts him. Jem's faith in justice becomes badly shaken, as is Atticus', when the hapless Tom is shot and killed while trying to escape from prison.
Despite Tom's conviction, Bob Ewell is humiliated by the events of the trial, Atticus explaining that he "destroyed [Ewell's] last shred of credibility at that trial." Ewell vows revenge, spitting in Atticus' face, trying to break into the judge's house, and menacing Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks the defenseless Jem and Scout while they walk home on a dark night after the school Halloween pageant. Jem suffers a broken arm in the struggle, but amid the confusion someone comes to the children's rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout realizes that he is Boo Radley.
Sheriff Tate arrives and discovers that Bob Ewell has died during the fight. The sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and ethics of charging Jem (whom Atticus believes to be responsible) or Boo (whom Tate believes to be responsible). Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell simply fell on his own knife. Boo asks Scout to walk him home, and after she says goodbye to him at his front door he disappears again. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective, and regrets that they had never repaid him for the gifts he had given them.
The grotesque and near-supernatural qualities of Boo Radley and his house, and the element of racial injustice involving tom Robinson contribute to the aura of the Gothic in the novel. Lee used the term 'gothic' to describe the architecture of Maycomb's courthouse and in regard to Dill's exaggerated morbid performance as Boo Radley. Outsiders are also an important element of Southern Gothic texts.
As a coming-of-age, Scout and Jem face hard realities and learn from them. Jem says to neighbour Miss Maudie the day after the trial, "It's like vein' a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon ... I always though Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like". This lease him to struggle with understanding the separations of race and class, and therefore grow.
Motif: Gothic details and Small town life
Lee adds drama to the story by including a number of Gothic details in the setting and plot. The gothic elements within the book are the unnatural snowfall, the fire that destroys Miss Maudie's house, the children's superstitions about Boo Radley, the mad dog that Atticys shoots, and the ominous night of the Halloween party on which Bob Ewell attacks the children.
Contrasting the Gothic motif of the story is the motif of old-fashioned, small-town values, which manifest throughout the novel. Lee emphasises the slow-paced, good-natured feel of life in Maycomb. She often deliberately juxtaposes small-town with Gothic; the horror of the fire is mitigated by the comforting scene of the people of Maycomb banding together to save Miss Maudie's possessions.
Symbols: Mockingbird and Boo Radley
The 'mockingbird' represents the idea of innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird is to destroy innocence. A number of characters (Jem, Tom Robinson, Dill, Boo Radley, Mr.Raymond) can be identified as mockingbirds; innocents who have been injured or destroyed through contact with evil.
At the end of the book Scout thinks that hurting Boo Radley would be like "shooting' a mockingbird." After Tom Robinson is shot, Mr.Underwood compares his death to "senseless slaughter of songbirds".
Throughout the novel, Boo Radley is an important measurement of the children's development from innocence to grown-up moral perspective. At the beginning, Boo is merely a source of superstition. As he begins to leave presents for them, he becomes increasingly intriguingly and real to them. At the end of the novel, he becomes fully human to Scout. Boo is a mockingbird, and an important symbol of the good that exists within people.
Themes:
Morality
The book dramatises Scout and Jem's transition from a perspective of childhood innocence, in which they assume that people are good because they've never seen evil, to a more adult perspective, in which they have confronted evil and must now incorporate it into their understanding of the world. A subtheme is the threat that hatred, prejudice and ignorance pose to the innocent; Tom Robinson and Bood Radley are not prepared for the evil that they encounter, and as a result, they are destroyed.
The moral voice of the book is embody by Atticus Finch, who is unique in that he has experienced evil without losing his faith in the human capacity for goodness. He tries to teach this lesson to Jem and Scout to show them that it is possible to live with conscience without losing hope or becoming cynical. Scout is shown to gradually develop throughout the novel towards understanding Atticu's lessons, culminating when, in the final chapters, she at last sees Boo Radley as a human being.
Education
When Scout starts school, she is ahead of her classmates because Atticus has taught her how to read and write. However, once her teacher discovers this, she punishes Scout and tells her to not learn anything else at home, because her father does not know how to teach properly. This is the first clear conflict between institutional education and education at home. When Scout comes to Atticus with concerns about her education, he tells her that she must continue going to school, even if she finds it frustrating, but he will continue to teach her at home. Clearly, Atticus understands the faults of the educational system, but also knows it is necessary for his children to pass through this system to be a part of society. At the end of the novel, Scout notes that she has learned probably all there is to learn, except maybe algebra. She understands that life experiences are the true teachers, and that Atticus has taught her more than school ever will.
Social Inequality
Scout and Jem spend a great deal of time trying to understand what defines and creates the social strata. Scout tends to believe that "folks are just folks", while Jem is convinced that social standing is related to how long people's relatives and ancestors have been able to write. Scout and the other children have a very clear understanding of the social inequalities in their town, but see these inequalities as natural and permanent. The finch family falls rather high up in the social hierarchy, while the Ewell family falls at the bottom. Maycomb's black population fall beneath all white families, including the Eweels, whom Atticus labels as "trash". Scout understands the social structure, but doesn't understand why it is so; she believes that everyone should be treated the same, no matter what family they are from.
Racism
During the Depression era, blacks were still highly subjugated members of society. Blacks were not permitted to commingle with whites in public settings, as exemplified in the courthouse physical separation of races and in the clearly distinct black and white areas of town. Things like intermarriage were almost unheard of, and sorely looked down upon. Mr. Raymond, a white man who married a black woman and has mixed children, reveals that he pretends to be an alcoholic by carrying around a paper bag with a bottle of Coca-Cola inside in order to let the town excuse his choice of marriage. Tom Robinson is convicted purely because he is a black man and his accuser is white. The evidence is so powerful in his favor, that race is clearly the single defining factor in the jury's decision. When Atticus loses the trial, he tries to make his children understand that although he lost, he did help move along the cause of ending racism as evidenced by the jury's lengthy deliberation period. Usually, such a trial would be decided immediately.
Adjectives to describe the book:
Injustice, Innocence, Morality, Compassion, Courage, Prejudice, Cultivation, Southern, Gothic, Growth
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