The Message of Moral Responsibility in To Kill a Mockingbird

The Message of Moral Responsibility in To Kill a Mockingbird

Not only is To Kill a Mockingbird a fun novel to read, it is purposeful. Harper Lee wrote the novel to demonstrate the way in which the world and its people should live together in harmony through a basic moral attitude of treating others with respect and kindness. The novel received the Pulitzer Prize in 1960, which places it among the best adult novels ever written; although it achieved this high recognition, today’s primary readers are adolescents. However, at the turning of the twenty-first century, one might wrongfully assume Harper Lee intended To Kill a Mockingbird a novel for adolescents and ignore its lessons for adults. According to “’Fine Fancy Gentlemen’ and ‘Yappy Folks’: Contending Voices in To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Theodore Hovet and Grace-Ann Hovet, Lee’s work is important because she does not supply the normal assumptions most in America harbor regarding the origins of racism. To the contrary, they argue that “Rather than ascribing racial prejudice primarily to ‘poor white trash’ (qtd. in Newitz and Wray), Lee demonstrates how issues of gender and class intensify prejudice, silence the voices that might challenge the existing order, and greatly complicate many Americans’ conception of the causes of racism and segregation” (67). Reading To Kill a Mockingbird provides its audience with a basic moral code by which to live and encounter individuals who appear different or make choices unlike those made by the mainstream populace. Therefore, this novel becomes part of our moral culture; regardless of age, people learn from the moral codes taught by defense attorney Atticus Finch, his children, and his community.

Using the backdrop of racial tension and an episode of southern living, Lee develops To Kill a Mockingbird to point out basic morals by which people should live. By Lee’s combining a fictionalization of the historic Scottsboro Trial and the novel’s use of the community to morally educate two children, her characters demonstrate moral responsibility. In the first part of the novel, Lee establishes conflict as Atticus Finch, the father, and the surrounding community, through various situations and conversations, enlighten Jem and Scout Finch with lessons of moral ethic. The moral responsibility of others is to express kindness and respect to others in a world where people of different races, socioeconomic statuses, and cultures exist. In setting the tone Lee establishes the mood through mentions of the Great Depression to remind her reader of the hardships the nation endured.