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.
Irony is the opposite of what is and what seems to be. Harper Lee uses irony in
To Kill A Mockingbird is a heroic tale of leadership and courage during racial times. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Atticus, To, Jem and Scout are unfortunately exposed to a really racist and prejudice society and town. Which ends up causing them to lose a case and really confuse Jem and Scout when they are young. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird it uses characterization to help show a theme which is loss of innocence when people are exposed to surprising and unfair situations.
The story, To Kill a Mockingbird is a very fine novel which exemplifies the life in the south and the human rights and values given to everybody. The book especially took the case of prejudice to a serious extreme. From the title, a mockingbird through the eyes of Harper Lee, is a person who has fallen victim to vicious stereotypes. The title To Kill a Mockingbird explains itself quite clearly in the end of the novel when Tom Robinson, one of the mockingbirds, is killed due to the stereotypes dumped upon him. Often, the use of stereotypes just breaks down the real truth of a person.
group in his society. In the quote ." . . If I didn't take this case
The book To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 by an author named Harper Lee. Harper Lee born was April 28, 1926 in Monroeville Alabama Lee had made 2 novels in the time she was alive she had wrote To Kill A Mockingbird and Go Set A Watchman. Harper lee had also illustrated a few children's books. So what is courage? To Kill A Mockingbird gives the readers a look into how terrible things were in the south during the 1930’s from prejudice to racism to morality and even youth. When an African American man named Tom Robinson is wrongly accused of raping a young, white girl a lawyer named Atticus Finch takes the case. Atticus Finch is the main character's father. Atticus is very different from most people in Maycomb county, Atticus believes in justice for all and that
“You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?” (Lee 197) A quote from Harper Lee’s award winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which says so much. It shows the prejudice present in the 1920’s and 1930’s and how a black man could not feel sorry for a white woman because he was black. Negroes were not treated as equals. In fact, Negroes were believed to be less than second-class citizens, even level with the animals on the social ladder and biologically inferior to whites. Negroes were lynched often in many states, without reason, by white mobs. Blacks weren’t treated right in any part of American society including the courtroom. , with both the lynching in the streets and the prejudice in the courtroom this was a time where blacks did not have a fair chance both in and out of court.
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee's only novel, is a fictional story of racial oppression, set in Maycomb, A.L. in 1925 to 1935, loosely based on the events of the Scottsboro trials. Unlike the story however, the racial discrimination and oppression in the novel very accurately portrays what it was like in the 1920's and 1930's in the south. Tom Robinson, the black man accused of raping a poor low class white girl of 19, never stood a chance of getting a fair trial. This can be supported by giving examples of racially discriminatory and oppressive events that actually took place in the south during the time period in which the novel is based. In addition to actual historical events, events and examples from the book that clearly illustrate the overpoweringly high levels of prejudice that were intertwined in the everyday thinking of the majority of the characters in the book supports the fact that Tom Robinson never stood a chance of getting a fair trial.
Mood helps in creating an atmosphere in a literary work by means of setting, theme, diction and tone. Throughout the book To kill a mockingbird the author wanted the mood to be sorrowful or vexed or just fret about how the people are acting because seeing how things were being treated or how people acted would be enough to make you feel angry or sad or worried for the people who were in the book. You always wanted to know what was going to come next or how something would end. Vex was a very prominent mood in this story and is definitely the most relevant.
To Kill A Mockingbird is a cultural and classic novel wrote by Harper Lee. A connection people believe is that the novel is based off of Harper Lee’s childhood. There are reasons to believe that there is a connection between the book and the author's life.
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.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee seems like a complete replica of the lives of people living in a small Southern U.S. town. The themes expressed in this novel are as relevant today as when this novel was written, and also the most significant literary devices used by Lee. The novel brings forward many important themes, such as the importance of education, recognition of inner courage, and the misfortunes of prejudice. This novel was written in the 1930s. This was the period of the “Great Depression” when it was very common to see people without jobs, homes and food. In those days, the rivalry between the whites and the blacks deepened even more due to the competition for the few available jobs. A very famous court case at that time was the Scottsboro trials. These trials were based on the accusation against nine black men for raping two white women. These trials began on March 25, 1931. The Scottsboro trials were very similar to Tom Robinson’s trial. The similarities include the time factor and also the fact that in both cases, white women accused black men.
"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy” (Lee 94). American writer Harper Lee definitely worked her way up to giving people joy with her book To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee was born on April, 28th, 1926 and grew up in Monroeville, Alabama. Her father was a former newspaper editor, who had served as a state senator and studied law in Monroeville, Alabama. As a lawyer's daughter, Harper Lee certainly was aware of the cases that demonstrated the inequities of the South before the Civil-Rights movement. Her Father was a part of these trials throughout her life, including the very famous Scottsboro Trial. Lee studied law at the University of Alabama for four years, and spent a year as an exchange student in Oxford Un...
The novel To Kill A Mockingbird, written by renowned author Harper Lee, was published on July 11, 1960. Her novel received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize and has become a modern-day American classic novel. The book’s setting is in Alabama and occurs when widespread racism and discrimination are high in the South. The name of the book arises from the common belief and saying that, ’It is a sin to kill a mockingbird’. To Kill A Mockingbird is narrated by Scout Finch, about her father, Atticus Finch, a well-known lawyer who fights to prove the innocence of a black man (Tom Robinson), who is unjustly accused of rape, and about Boo Radley, her mysterious neighbor who saves both her and her brother Jem from being killed.
The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee contain a very engaging family who are the Cunninghams. The Cunninghams are very poor; they are people who live in the woods. They are a family who depend highly on crops. Walter Cunningham, the 'father' of the family has to work hard on the cultivation of crops because crops is the only form of wages for them. The Cunninghams have no money. Their only way to survive is through paying others with their crops. The Cunninghams are not main characters in the book, but they are characters who 'brought out' other characters' personality. Harper Lee displays that there is a lot of prejudice going on in Maycomb by putting the Cunninghams in the book. "The Cunninghams [were] country folks, farmers"(21) who are very honest people in Maycomb, they "never took anything they [could not] pay back"(23), but they are unfairly mistreated by part of the society in Maycomb.
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.