Students enjoy reading To Kill A Mockingbird, but my experience has been that their appreciation is meager. Over and over again their interpretations stress the race prejudice issue to the exclusion of virtually everything else….

In the pages that follow I shall set forth both a practical classroom approach to the novel and an interpretation of To Kill a Mockingbird based on that approach. The reader should bear in mind that I am dealing here primarily with the elements of theme and structure….

It is not difficult to teach students the distinction between full and summary rendering. Furthermore, through their work in composition they are already familiar with the principle that the more space one gives an incident or idea, the more emphasis it receives. In fiction, it follows that those incidents that are fully rendered and those that are relatively long will be keys to the author's...