To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird gives an accurate reflection of race relations in the Southern United States during the 1930s. The novel, set around a single-father family in small-town Alabama, contains a vast array of symbolism to intertwine the main plot with several subplots. Through her novel, Lee debunked the quaint antebellum Southern society for the realism of Southern culture. The timing of this publication, which denounced prejudicial attitudes, coordinated with the early Civil Rights Movement in the United States. This best selling novel became a classic and required reading for many American high school students.

Author Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1926. She spent four years at the University of Alabama and one year at Oxford University in England. She also attended law school, leaving six months short of finishing her coursework to pursue a writing career in New York City. There she helped author Truman Capote research In Cold Blood. To earn money she took a job as an airline reservation clerk. In 1960, Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird, and in 1961 the novel won the Pulitzer Prize. By 1962, an Academy Award-winning motion picture was produced from the novel, and, in the same year, Lee won the Paperback of the Year award given by Bestsellers magazine to the best selling paperback of the year.

Harper Lee, a direct descendant of General Robert E. Lee, recommended to potential authors, "Write what you know and do so thoughtfully." She emphatically denied the her prize-winning workwas autobiographical. The similarities it contains to her own life are striking, however. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, for instance, was a lawyer.

Gregory Peck (standing) in a scene from the film To Kill a Mockingbird.

The novel's symbolism and clarity made it a literary classic. It is narrated in the voice of a white six-year-old tomboy named Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. She lives with her ten-year-old brother, Jem, and her father, Atticus Finch, in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama. The story centers on the alleged rape of the white Mayella Ewell, daughter of the wicked Bob Ewell, by the black Tom Robinson. Atticus serves as Robinson's attorney. The all-white jury finds Robinson guilty even after Atticus proves reasonable doubt of Robinson's guilt.

The novel portrays common, real-life stereotypical racist events of the time. Atticus faces taunts of "nigger lover" and "lawing for niggers." There also is the attempted lynching of Mr. Robinson. The perceived threat of blacks to white women and the salvation embodied in white males are mocked.

Throughout the novel, Lee pursues various themes like ignorance versus knowledge, cowardice versus heroism, and children versus adults. Courage versus cowardice is portrayed in Atticus's demeanor in a confrontation with Bob Ewell over Atticus's open disbelief of Mayella's accusation. The dispute also represents an old stereotype of race cohesion that Ewell believes Atticus is breaking. Lee draws parallels of ignorance in her handling of characters Boo Radley and Tom Robinson; they are both presumed guilty with no one having taken the time to get to know them. Radley is the Finch's neighbor who has an evil reputation, especially among the children, who fear him without ever having met him. Radley turns out to be a hero when he saves Scout and Jem from murder at the hands of Bob Ewell. Tom Robinson dies while trying to escape prison, representing how the racist South has endured and egalitarian measures have floundered.

Explicitly symbolic is Jem's attempt to make a snowman during a rare Alabama snowfall. As he makes the snow into a ball he roles it to accrue more snow. While rolling the snowball it picks up dirt giving the snowman a dirty surface. The snowman signifies the superficiality of skin color.

To Kill a Mockingbird underscores many themes and represents a universal story from a regional perspective. The overall argument involves the obvious plea for justice while mocking the mores of Southern society. It is Lee's only major published work. Though she faded back into the obscurity of Monroeville, Alabama, her mark in literary persuasion endures.

Johnson, Claudia D. To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1994.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1960.