Harper Lee has been a very influential writer in our world today. In her book To Kill a Mockingbird, she has covered the significant topics of discrimination, the importance of education, and the good and the bad that lies in each person. Many of the people and events in Harper Lee’s life have inspired her to write her award winning novel.
Nelle Harper Lee grew up in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama alongside her two parents and four siblings. Harper uses her family as a main inspiration for the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, so that it may create a more personal feel while reading the novel. This clearly shows how much Harper Lee’s family meant to her. Examples of the relations she made to her family can be seen in characters such as her sister, father, mother, neighbor, and other people that have been in her life.
Her sibling, Louise Lee, plays a key role in the naming of the main character Jean Louise Scout Finch. Jean Louise Scout Finch,who is also referred to as Scout Finch, was a tomboy who never actually fit in with all the other female roles in the novel. She was always told what to wear by her aunt, however, she was more content with plain overalls. As a child, Harper too was given the label of a “tomboy.” In fact, she was called “The Queen of the Tomboys.”
Atticus Finch, father of Scout and Jem Finch, was closely related to Lee’s father. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a caring father and professional lawyer who served in the Alabama legislature for over 12 years. Starting out as a supporter of racial segregation, Amasa quickly turned against these ideas after witnessing several protests that changed his point of view. Harper deeply loved her father and he always treated her and her other siblings wi...
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...ing her law degree, Harper Lee decided that she wanted to become an author and the birth of her writing career began.
Harper began to compose several short stories in which she would submit different local publication agencies. After adding on to one her short stories and submitting it for publication, it was quickly rejected. But with the help of her editor, Harper Lee was able to successfully publish To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960 just as the Civil Rights Movement was in effect in the United States.
The success of Harper Lee’s one and only novel was immense. Winning the Pulitzer Prize just after a year of publication, being translated into more than forty languages, selling more the 30 million copies worldwide, and being adapted into a Oscar Winning Movie just two years after its publication are just few of the many accomplishments of this brilliant classic.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1960. Print.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee is a story of national magnitude that contains complex characters. Harper Lee deals with the emotions and spirits of the characters insightfully. A few of these characters display courage at one point or another in the story. These flashes of courage come during turbulent times of the story, and often led to success.
The parallels comparing To Kill A Mockingbird to important historical ideas and events in America were used by Harper Lee to show how the corruption of the human mindset was influenced by the hardships of the 1930s. The decade that the book was placed in was a prominent time of change for America. The historical fiction work, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee is a popular book because it relates the events in the plot to events in history. The use of cultural parallels provides audiences with a strong connection to characters, and makes the novel overall more enjoyable.
The height of this movement was in 1960 when the novel was published. Lee grew up during a time when slavery was not uncommon. Racism and prejudice were common beliefs at this time. When Lee was a kid, a case had arose called the Scottsboro Case. The Scottsboro case was when nine black men were accused of raping two white women. Lee had a different perspective than everybody else at the time. She believed that everybody has equal rights and she wanted other people to see this as well. She wrote To Kill A Mockingbird to get society to accept others for who they are and their individuality instead of their gender or race. The book get people to think about the effect they can have on equal rights (“Why Did Harper Lee Write ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’?”). To Kill A Mockingbird addresses tolerance, prejudice and the courage it takes to make a change in society (“Why Did Harper Lee Wrote The Novel To Kill A
Harper Lee addresses prejudice, tolerance, and the courage it takes to make a societal change. For instance, Harper grew up hearing the reactions and suffrage taking place during the Scottsboro trial. She takes inspiration for her novel by including an all white jury, rushed trials, and an attempted lynching in her retelling. Both the Tom Robinson trial and the Scottsboro
In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee includes many contrasting perspectives that provide an understanding into each character’s attitude as well as what was anticipated of people at the time. The book is the story of a young girl, Jean Louise, her father, Atticus and brother, Jem, in a small town called Maycomb, which is racially segregated during the time of the great depression. As Jean Louise, otherwise known by her nickname Scout, reflects on her childhood with her brother, Jem, the reader is able to see and hear the story as she relives the events in her memory. Scout tells the story around the time she was almost six years old, and she is living with her ten year old brother, Jem, and her father Atticus, “the lawyer who defends Tom Robinson” (Saney). The quarrels between characters regarding racial oppression and gender roles throughout the novel cause tension and uproar in the town, as each person has their own perspective on a situation. The novel opens with Jean Louise reflecting on past events with her brother Jem, and it leads into the first perspective of a child against the adult perspective.
Harper Lee’s only book, To Kill a Mockingbird, is the stereotypical tale of childhood and innocence, yet it successfully incorporates mature themes, like the racism in the South at the time, to create a masterpiece of a work that has enraptured people’s minds and hearts for generations. According to esteemed novelist Wally Lamb, “It was the first time in my life that a book had sort of captured me. That was exciting; I didn’t realize that literature could do that” (111). Scout’s witty narration and brash actions make her the kind of heroine you can’t help but root for, and the events that take place in Maycomb County are small-scale versions of the dilemmas that face our world today. Mockingbird is a fantastically written novel that belongs on the shelves for classic literature that everyone should take the time to read and appreciate for their execution of style and the importance of their content.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning published in 1960. It was instantly successful and became an American classic of modern fiction. Harper Lee’s writing style mainly consists of the trait voice in her work. Harper Lee’s work is compelling and engaging, all while holding the readers attention. You hear the writer’s heart and soul being poured into her work by her great diction in the novel. “By setting the story’s setting in the south, the diction of the novel was mostly southern, not only the accent, but also the unique phrases of the southern inhabitants.”(Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960) This allowed the reader to connect to what life was like during the setting of the story during the 1930s.
In 1957, Lee submitted a manuscript to JB Lippincott Company, which consisted of two essays and three short stories. She was advised to re-write her work perhaps by expanding one of the short stories into a novel. For the next two and a half years, Lee revised the work under the supervision of her editor, Tay Hohoff [6]. Finally, in 1960, Harper Lee's first and only book, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published. The story, which is set in a small Alabama town during the 1930's, is narrated by Scout, a six year old girl. She tells the events surrounding a court case in which her father, Atticus Finch, defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been wrongly accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman [4]. The novel was extremely successful, selling over fifteen millio...
The award winning novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, may appear to be a simple story about childhood and life in a Southern town in Alabama, but it is really a complex novel dealing with themes of education, moral courage, and tolerance. Through the eyes of Scout Finch, the narrator, Harper Lee teaches the reader about the importance of a moral education, bravery and courage, and prejudice vs. tolerance.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch represents a young southern tomboy who strives to find her identity. The adults in her town of Maycomb...
Nelle Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird has been considered one of the classic works of American literature. To Kill A Mockingbird is the work ever published by Nelle Harper Lee, and it brought her great fame. However, Nelle Harper Lee has published several other articles in popular magazines. Nelle Harper Lee is not an individual who desires to be in the light and little is known about her personal life. At the time it is believed she is possible working on her memoirs. The fictional work of To Kill A Mockingbird plots many elements close to real events in America’s struggle over civil rights.
Nelle Harper Lee, an American writer, has become an international bookseller for her first and only book, To Kill a Mockingbird. She was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. Harper enjoyed many friendships in her small southwestern town. She had one older sibling, Alice Lee. Harper’s mother, Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, was a homemaker. She was intellectually brilliant and attended a private school for girls. But, she also suffered from a “nervous disorder.” This made Frances not a big part of Harper’s life due to mental illness. Because of this, Harper’s father, Amasa Coleman (A.C.) Lee, became the one Harper looked up to and adored. A.C. Lee was greatly devoted to helping others in his lifetime. He had numerous careers including a country school teacher, bookkeeper, and newspaper editor, but his main job was a lawyer. Before he became a lawyer, he defended two African American men who were accused of murdering a white. They lost the case and the two men were punished with death. Harper was greatly influenced by her father and wanted to pursue his career as a ...
The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It is set in the 1930s, a time when racism was very prominent. Harper Lee emphasizes the themes of prejudice and tolerance in her novel through the use of her characters and their interactions within the Maycomb community. The narrator of the story, Scout, comes across many people and situations with prejudice and tolerance, as her father defends a black man.
Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She is the youngest of four children, which is why she says she has a knack for writing. She devoted her life to writing and even gave up other jobs that she loved like working for the airline company and going to college. Her first attempt at writing “To Kill a Mocking Bird” was declined by every publisher, because she only wrote a series of short stories. Upon revising the book, she made it into one of the best selling novels around. She was even congratulated by those publishers that said she would never be able to write books well enough. That was all the motivation that she needed.