To Kill a Mockingbird
Info
- Author: Harper Lee
- Genre: Bildungsroman
- Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
- Type: Official Novel Book
- Release: Jul 05, 2005
- ASIN/ISBN: 0060935464
- Rating:
- Status: Read (336 Pages)
Review
On Oct 26, 2007 Corinne said:
""When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."
Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber"
Details
"To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee written in the bildungsroman and Southern Gothic genres. The novel is loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred in her hometown when she was 10 years old. Lee has acknowledged that the character Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, who serves as the novel's narrator, is based on herself.[1] Published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. It is taught in approximately 74% of schools in the United States. A 1991 survey by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress' Center for the Book found that To Kill a Mockingbird came in second after the Bible in books "most often cited as making a difference."
To Kill a Mockingbird addresses themes such as courage, racial justice, the death of innocence, tragedy, and coming of age, set against a backdrop of life in the Deep South. One writer noted its impact in saying, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism." It has proven to be not only an extraordinarily influential book to have it compared with the Bible, but controversial as well, being the target of various campaigns to have it removed from public classrooms. The book was successfully adapted for film by director Robert Mulligan with a screenplay by Horton Foote in 1962. To date, it is Lee's only published novel."