To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird

At only thirty-four years of age, a woman created one of the most famous and touching books in American literature to this day. This woman, Nelle Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, a small town in Alabama. Harper Lee was born to Amasa Coleman Lee, who had many occupations, and Frances Cunningham Finch. Lee is most famously known for her universally known and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. As a child she loved to hang around the guys, and was fascinated by reading and writing at a young age. Since she grew up in the South, segregation was very common amongst many of the people in her town, yet she was raised to treat everyone the same. The interests, events, and social conditions during Harper Lee’s childhood inspired her to write one of the greatest novels of the century.

What inspired Lee to write To Kill a Mockingbird, was the fact that she wanted to create her own life story, as well as implying moral lessons such as courage, understanding, and equality. Many of the events and characters in the story can be related to her own childhood experience. Around the age of five, there was a trial known as the Scottsboro case, in which nine black males were falsely accused on the charge of raping two young white women (Biography of Harper Lee (1926). The men were nearly killed even before they were convicted by mobs, and although there was no evidence of the crime, they were sentenced to death, just as in her novel. This event inspired her to create the trial consisting of Tom Robinson in her book. As a child in the South, Harper Lee was exposed to a substantial amount of racism, which filled the minds of many during her childhood. Her father at the time was a lawyer, who was singlehandedly presen...

... middle of paper ...

... not rape Mayella he is still proven guilty and is later killed.

The entire novel is narrated by Scout Finch. At the beginning of the novel she is only six years old. She cannot understand many things. This can mean that we cannot understand the novel because we only know what she does. A six year old cannot fully understand why her maid is colored or why she is not allowed to be friends with poor Walter Cunningham. This means that we have missed certain facts that only the author knows. However throughout the novel Scout does learn many things. The author throughout the novel also seems to think that our judicial system is never fair. This is not true. In Tom Robinson's case however it was not fair. His jury was an all racist jury.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a well worth novel. It is a classic that teachers us about innocence, knowledge, prejudice, and courage.