To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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Book Reviews of To Kill a Mockingbird
Book Review: A classic for a reason
Summary: 5 Stars
I just read this novel for the first time, and I wish I hadn't waited so long to have read it. I wish I hadn't lived so much of my life without it in my mind, informing how I look at others and what I think my place in the world is, because I think this book does change how one sees good and its role in the lives of those hurt by the cruelty of humanity.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is the story of young Scout, who starts the book out remembering her life at the age of 6. Her brother, Jem, is 10, and their summer neighbor, Dill, is 7 ("I'm little but I'm old," he says.) (Interestingly, the character of Dill is based on Truman Capote, whom Harper Lee knew as a child.) Their father, Atticus Finch is an attorney, and their mother, who died when Scout was 2, figures not at all in the story. The family has a black maid, Calpurnia. Various neighbors are also mentioned: Miss Rachel, Dill's aunt; Miss Maudie; Miss Stephanie; Mrs. Dubose; and, of course, the Radley family, in the spooky house the children had to pass on their way to school. The novel begins with Dill's first summer in Maycomb, the small Alabama town that is the setting for this novel. Dill, Jem and Scout fixate on getting "Boo" Radley to come out of his house. Boo is a mysterious man, about whom the neighbors trade stories and with whom the children like to scare themselves. Atticus takes a dim view of the children using Boo and his life for various entertainments and chides them whenever he finds them engaged in one of their attempts to catch a glimpse of him.
The summer ends and Dill goes back to his family and the Finch children go to school, Scout for the first time. Her teacher discovers that Scout can read and tells her that her father's been teaching her all wrong and that she is not allowed to read at home any more with Atticus. Scout also gets in trouble the first day of school for standing up and explaining to the teacher why Walter Cunningham cannot accept a quarter from the teacher to go have lunch in town (he didn't bring lunch with him). Scout explains that Walter can't borrow a quarter because "he's a Cunningham." When that is insufficient information for the teacher, Scout says, "The Cunninghams never took anything they can't pay back--no church baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off of anybody, they get along on what they have. They don't have much, but they get along on it. ... You're shamin' him, Miss Caroline. Walter hasn't got a quarter at home to bring you, and you can't use any stovewood" (which is how they paid Atticus Finch for some legal work he had done for them). Miss Caroline smacks Scout's hand with a ruler; Scout tries to fight Walter in the schoolyard, and then Jem invites him home for lunch. Later Atticus promises Scout that even though she must attend school, he will still read with her every night. And so we get the tone of the father-daughter relationship, practical, loving, guidance and, more than anything, acceptance of Scout for who she is. Atticus also shows over the course of the novel the need to live up to the love his children have for him in his professional and personal life.
Soon Atticus is engaged in a legal case that engenders criticism in the town. He has been appointed to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Atticus's "mistake" is that he actually means to defend the man. Scout and Jem hear criticism from their friends, but Atticus instructs them never to fight over it with other children, to hold their heads up high. He tells Scout that he could never tell her to do anything again if he walked away from this responsibility. The children watch the trial and the outcome, and the reader sees that like Boo Radley, Tom Robinson is one of the people hurt by the cold world and the evil that exists in humanity. Atticus strives to help his children understand and not be brought low by such cruelty like the hermit Boo and the convicted Tom.
Even with the verdict going his way, the father of the alleged rape victim, Mr. Ewell, vows to get revenge on Atticus for making him and his daughter look foolish on the witness stand.
I won't go into the climax of the book, but wanted to note that what I love about it is the love that is shown by Atticus in his behavior toward his children, his client and the people he lives with in the town. Even when Ewell spits in his face, he maintains his dignity and seems to believe that Ewell needed to make the threat to carry on his life in Maycomb. Atticus is a kind of Christ figure of the Maycomb community. The children's neighbor Miss Maudie says nearly as much to their aunt, "Whether Maycomb knows it or not, we're paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple." -- this even while others are vilifying him for the work he did for Tom Robinson.
As Scout grows, her capacity to to understand grows, too, and her fascination with Boo Radley changes into a kind of longing to meet this man, who never goes outside and has no friends. She wants to meet him and say "hey" to him and ask him how his day is. Her capability to love and be kind is growing, and she wants to share it.
The ending of the book is the apotheosis of Scout's growing capability to live, understand and treat others with dignity, and we also see the ongoing example of Atticus to do right, along with other townspeople who want to protect the weakest and smallest among them. It is truly one of the most moving chapters I've read in my life. (I tear up just thinking about it!)
The novel itself is charmingly written, the voice is of an older Scout who maintains her independence and zeal for life, but who understands more than the 6-year-old Scout did at the beginning of the narrative. The story flows smoothly, and the plot is engaging. If you haven't read this, you need to.
Book Review: Why I Love This Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, written in 1960, is a work that I feel has literary value and is worth examining. It is a story of a father, Atticus Finch, in small-town Maycomb, Alabama during the depression who is raising his two children on his own. Jem is the older brother who is constantly initiating explorations, and Scout is the tomboyish younger sister who helps him stir up trouble. Their mother died when they were small children, and Calpurnia was a black woman who kept house and watched over the children while Atticus was working as a lawyer. It has many subplots, but the mainly the novel is about a legal case in which Atticus is fighting a battle he knows he can't win. He is defending a black man, Tom Robinson, that he knows is not guilty of the murder of a white man. As racism was still common during the depression, Tom Robinson was essentially automatically guilty, but Atticus decides to fight for him regardless.
After reading this piece three times, I have come upon and changed many opinions concerning it. The first time I read this novel, I didn't like it at all. I didn't understand how a book could be titled To Kill a Mockingbird and only mention mockingbirds three times in its duration. Reading it a second time with newly acquired maturity and comprehension, the title made more sense to me, making the reading experience less frustrating. As a ninth grade honors English student, I was finally forced to take the book for more than its face value and truly appreciate all it had to offer. The development of characters is exquisite, the uses of metaphors are intense, and the underlying theme of the novel was one that kept me coming back to further understand it.
Harper Lee spends a great deal of time describing new characters in this novel. Although the specific details of the physical appearances, backgrounds, and mannerisms of each character might seem to some as redundant and a waste of good page space, I feel it really enriched the experience for me. When I know that Calpurnia was "all angles and bones; she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard ," I can create an image in my mind. I no longer picture a simple, black housekeeper; I see a woman who works with dedication and vigor. I can imagine her standing in my own kitchen, squinting out the window at my brother and me causing trouble. I feel that this descriptive mental image further ties me into the story.
The mockingbird is a simply a "common grayish bird, especially of the southern U.S. that is remarkable for its exact imitations of the notes of other birds ," until it is used in this novel. It then takes on a much deeper meaning as a contextual symbol. In this novel, the use of symbolism as a metaphoric method is extremely prevalent. Mockingbirds represent innocence. When their uncle gives Scout and Jem air rifles, Atticus tells them they can shoot as many bluebirds as they want, but reminds them that, "...it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. " This is because mockingbirds do one thing, and that is make music that people enjoy, as opposed to doing destructive things, like other birds. To kill a mockingbird would be to kill an innocent creature, which is mirrored in Atticus' case with the innocent Tom Robinson. This symbolism really made me interact with what I was reading, because it was a lesson I firmly believed in and was taught as I was growing up. When a literary piece captures my beliefs or thoughts or feelings like that, it really connects me on a deeper level that makes the experience much more intense because it is personal.
Atticus also teaches his children that they can "never really understand a person until you consider things from his point-of-view... " This theme is not only something I can also relate to, but it is used in a repetitive, but not redundant, way in the novel. Harper Lee provides examples of this so discreetly that it takes a great deal of focus to pick them out. When a mob is threatening Atticus for his defense of Tom Robinson, Scout picks a man out of the crowd and talks to him about his child that is her age. This made him back down from the mob's threats, because she put the man into her father's position, as a parent who was teaching right and wrong. This need for heightened concentration on the text really made the book thrilling above its existing entertainment on the basic level. When I had to give the extra attention to the small, seemingly unimportant events in the novel, it made the story come to life and provided me with a desire to delve further into what Harper Lee had hidden in this book for me to discover.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a literary work that has had an impact on my life in many ways. I was encouraged to follow the lessons my parents had instilled in me during my childhood, including being understanding of other people and the challenges in their lives and recognizing, valuing and respecting innocence. I really interacted with the characters and metaphors in a story for the first time while reading a novel. I learned that novels can be much more complex than we take them to be, but sometimes it takes patience and focus to find out what the author is trying to tell us. It was the first book I ever examined at a deeper level, and it is still the book I have spent the most time digging into and contemplating. For this reason, I can say I truly liked this novel.
Book Review: The Revelation of Truth
Summary: 5 Stars
Thr first 125 or so pages of the novel seem a real disconcerting affair,a tedious plough through the simplest chain of events seemingly unrelated to the whole essence of it. And then'the reader suddenly stumbles upon the theme of the novel and finds himself contemplaing a dark,impelling truth,the truth of the Western society being divided by race,class and colour.
Set against the backdrop of the Depression, Harper Lee's "To Klill A Mockingbird" traces 3 years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch in a country town of Maycomb,Alabama in southern Unite States of America as she and her elder brother Jem perceive through their young,quzzical eyes the irrational prejudice of the people against blacks and are unable to comprehend or accept the racial tension that's readily staring at the reader from virtually every page of this entertaining classic.
"To Kill A Mockingbird" is the saga of Atticus,the father of Jem and Scout,a widower and lawyer,the hero of the piece, and his eternal fight for justice for a black man charged with the rape of a nineteen-year-old white girl. Tom Robinson is the real mockingbird of the story;wronged,hapless,hopeless and circustancially crippled negro chased by the intellectually limited white hunters. Atticus is the odd man out and is severely chastened for despite being a white,he defends an ignominable white. He's called "a nugger-lover" and his children are consistently hackled at school as well as by Mrs.Henry Lafayette Dubose,a sinister,cynical woman who subsides to death due to morphine addiction.
"To Kill A Mockingbird" is indeed a social tragedy but the plot of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel consorts other fragmented dark pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and the final picture is a ghastly one framed in a social contour of deep hypocrisy and abusive racial segregation. The agony of Tom Robinson when he undergoes a clinical segmentation of his alrady distorted character during his trial as the rapist of Mayella Violet Ewell symbolises the eternal blasphemised black community's urge to fabricate itself into the social realm. Little Scout---the narrator of the novel---and Jem are confounded by the town's conscience and find the deep-rooted prejudice and hypocritic mind-set of the people a tough feature to digest. These "inquisitive children" endure a complex relationship with their father and their innocence and bemused exclamatory remarks lends a superaded charm to the mesh of events. "Jem,I ain't ever heard of a nigger snowman",Scout asks her developing broter once and on another occasion lays bare the stark double-standard sustained by the people:"Jem,how can you hate Hitler so an' then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home---?" Boo Radley's queeness of locking himself up in his house for good transfigures from a mere item of comic relief both to the reader and to Jem,Scout and their friend Dill to a suden realisation of truth that he does so "because he wants to" escape from the bitter cold gale of base racism outside.
Written in first-person narrative through the confused but unrelenting hand of Scout Finch,Harper Lee's scheme of ideas aptly ekes out the social scars and humanity's vices. A sly humour underlines the multidimensional perspectives of the town,a small area chunked out of the large human landscape and portraying life as it is. Witty ironies and direct sarcasms as in the issue of First Purchase M.E. Church being worshipped by negroes on Sundays and "white men gambl(-ing) on it on weekays" underline a much deeper insight into the Western society. The unscrupulous running away of Tom Robinson from the crime-scene,the subsequent alegation of rape against him,the stripping off of the illusion that the sheriff of the Macomb county Mr.Heck Tate bore against the the alleged criminal,coloured cok Calpurnia's blendind of dual lives of a white and a black,Jem and Scout's comprehension of the Cunningham's true identity,the mistaken judgement of the jury,Mr.Link Deas's sympathy towards Tom's wife Helen,and the architect of the doom of the negro as wel asthat of the novel Mr.Bob Ewell's poetically just demise all conform to the interfusion of the light and dark shades of life.
"To Kill A Mockingbird" is not even 50 years old and already it has been acclaimed as a classic,an enthralling explicit book which aims to elucidate the biasness of the society towards the minor fractions. Even in this 21st.century,racism,racial tensions and racial abuse are still loitering around in all nooks and corners of the world and Harpe Lee's mssively massively successful book exposes the violence and meanness that lurks underneath the nobleman's surface. Attiucus advises his children:"Shoot all the bluejays you want,if you can hit 'em,but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird". And this sin is being shouldered and would be loaded on the posterity of all generations. Scout and Jem would now be old and still retain their armour of innocence but others,who're diabolically more abundant in nature,such as Mrs.Dubose,Mr.Ewell and Miss Gates,never expound themselves out of their self-made cocoons and consequently never grow. The relevance of this superbly conceived classic in our age is hollering at us from virtually every oppressed man's cries and the need for the Atticuses,Jemes,Scoutes and Deases couldn't arrive at a more appropriate time.
Book Review: What a read!
Summary: 5 Stars
In a recent writing assignment, my son noted:My mom chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as our family book club's March book. I flipped through, saw the number of pages, and thought, "Boring!" Later that night, I read the first page and discovered that the main character's brother was about my age and wanted to play football and own an air rifle. Then, a few days later, I continued reading and even though I found the writing a little "fancy," I was finally able to find the beauty of Lee's book - it's a pretty "grown-up" story, but it's seen through the eyes of kids like me. That makes hard subjects easier to understand, which makes the book so much more interesting.
The novel is told from a young girl's perspective. Because the theme of racism, the subject of rape, and the idea of injustice are a little "over the top" - even for bright readers -Lee chose a young narrator to tell the story of a black man falsely accused of raping a young white woman and one man's fight to free him. If the story had been told by an adult, readers would have to suffer through the unnecessary chit-chat, opinions, and worries of that perspective. Seeing Maycomb County through Scout's innocent eyes, however, prevents this "masterpiece of American literature" from being an "I-had-to-read-it" sort of book.
Scout, her brother Jem, and their father form one of many families of Maycomb County, Alabama. In that southern state during the Great Depression, "[t]here was no hurry for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy, and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County." As the novel begins, Scout is six and about to start school, where she will be criticized for coming to class already knowing how to read and write. Her young teacher scolds Scout: "Now you tell your father not to teach you anymore. It's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undo the damage." (p. 17) Jem, a fifth-grader, allows his sister to join him in many of his adventures, including his plans with Dill to make Boo Radley come out. But he thinks Scout "is getting more like a girl every day." (p. 52) The children's father, Atticus Finch, is a state legislator and one of the county's leading lawyers. He is selected to defend Tom Robinson, a Negro accused of rape.
Racism still exists today, but the problems don't compare to those described in To Kill a Mocking Bird. The main problem seems to be that Negroes are considered the least human of four kinds of people. As Jem tells Scout, "There's four kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there's the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes." (p. 226) To make the point about Negroes being somehow less important than other folks, the author tells Tom's story. He is a Negro whose left arm is stripped of muscle from a childhood accident. He stops to help nineteen-year-old Mayella Ewell with several chores because, as Tom admits at his trial, "I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more'n the rest of `em" - referring to her family, who gathers their supplies from the nearby dump and whose father is a drunkard who beats them. When Bob Ewell catches his daughter hugging the black man, he accuses Tom of raping Mayella to save their family from disgrace. "And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to `feel sorry' for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people's." (p. 204) Atticus Finch does his best to make Tom a free man. His efforts, though, only buy more time from the jury, which still returns a guilty verdict. Unlike her brother, Scout believes that "there's just one kind of folks. Folks." But Tom still ends up dead - shot as he tries to escape from punishment for a crime he did not (could not) commit. To Kill a Mockingbird could be a pretty "heavy" book for young readers if it only concentrated on racism, rape, and Atticus Finch's unsuccessful attempt to free an innocent man. So Lee combines the story of Tom Robinson with the mythology surrounding the inscrutable Mr. Arthur Radley, whom Jem, Scout, and their summertime friend Dill call Boo Radley. One story about Boo is that he stabbed his father with scissors while cutting newspapers for his scrapbook. Another story has Boo scratching neighbors' door screens. Yet another says that he eats squirrels. Kids love creepy stories, and the antics of the three friends as they try to make Boo come out of his house give the novel light and humor.
Although I had a rough time "getting into" To Kill a Mockingbird, when I finally did I was surprised by how good it was. By the way, the book has such a cool title. I didn't understand it at all when I began the book. Then, in chapter 10, I realized where the title came from. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." (p. 90) But not until Scout says to her father, "Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?" (p. 270), did I realize who the book's mockingbirds were. I will read this book with my children someday and hope they will with theirs.
Book Review: Wonderful
Summary: 5 Stars
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that was written in 1960 by Harper Lee about Jem and Scout Finch growing up in Maycomb County, Alabama. Their father, Atticus, is a well-respected lawyer who is assigned to the case of Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson is an African-American man who is unjustly charged with committing a crime against Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Although Tom Robinson's case is predictably lost because of the racial and prejudicial beliefs that existed at the time, Atticus feels obligated to accept Tom Robinson's case. Atticus Finch is a strong person who is well ahead of the times, who believes in Tom and who wishes to help him as much as possible. He also wants to set an example to his children against the prejudicial beliefs that they are growing up around. Besides Atticus, Jem and Scout, there are many other important characters in the book, especially as it progresses.As the book advances, the characters change. They evolve, become more or less important, and fall in and out of the story. For example, in the first part of the book, Miss Caroline is one of the main characters. She is Scout's first grade teacher, and it is in her classroom that Scout faces the first injustice done to her. Dill, who spends summers with his aunt, Rachel Haverford, in Maycomb, is also an important character in the first part of the book. He plays an important role in being a friend to Jem and Scout and brings out more information about Boo Radley. On the other hand, Boo Radley does not play an important role consistently throughout the book. In the beginning, he leaves gifts for the Finch children. After he can no longer do that, he is not heard from until the resolution of the novel, when he saves their life. Miss Maudie, the Finch's neighbor, is important through out the book. She is always around the help the children and shares her wisdom. Calpurnia, the black woman who works at the Finch's household, is also important throughout the book. She serves as a good example of the African-American community to the children. Another member of the household is Aunt Alexandra, Atticus Finch's sister. In the midst of the main conflict, she moves to Maycomb to live with her brother's family. At first there are many conflicts, but soon Aunt Alexandra is loved as part of the family in her own way. She is supportive of her brother, Atticus, even when she disagrees with him about the Robinson case. Atticus's client, Tom Robinson, is very important to the plot of the story, although he is not the main character. When the conflict is examined, he is the main protagonist. The Ewell family is in the story more than Tom, although they are featured as the antagonists. Other characters are Judge Taylor, who presides over Tom Robinson's case, Heck Tate, the county sheriff, Mr. Underwood, owner of The Maycomb Tribune, and Mrs. Dubose, an elderly neighbor.
Although this book was published in 1960, it is set in the 1930s in Maycomb County, Alabama. It is a town that is full of southern pride, where everyone knows everyone else, where rarely does someone leave, and where judgments are formed about people from their last name. Because each family has a position in the county, and each person in that family just follows in the way their ancestors lived and behaved. Each class just keeps to themselves. It would seem like the town was divided into the townspeople, the Negroes, the country folk, and the people who live in trash despite their skin color. This story could happen anywhere, but the setting definitely accelerated the pace and depth of the plot.
The author's purpose was to write a novel that explored the issue of prejudice in a way that everyone can feel and relate to. By writing through the eyes of a young girl from ages six to eight, it allows readers to look at complex, controversial issues in a simple, innocent way. Scout asks simple questions such as "Why? Why does this happen? Why is this going on?" Harper Lee makes the reader feel angry at the twisted prejudice that existed for so long. I think that the author accomplished her purpose the instant her successful book was published and later won the Pulitzer Prize.
I can understand why this book has become a classic piece of American literature. The book conveys many emotions and completely shows the injustice and desperate feelings of humanity. The first half of the book focuses on building the atmosphere of the town and of the Finches and other residents. You learn of the school, the neighbors, the opinions of the town, and become familiar with the important character's lives. Then, you are thrown into the midst of Tom Robinson's trial. The whole community must face their personal prejudices and angry feelings of injustice and helplessness. You can see how the behavior of others affects the feelings and opinions of a person. I think that this is an important book that still holds a lot of meaning.