To Kill a Mocking Bird : A novel published in the year 1960 was written by author Harper Lee.
The novel To Kill a Mockingbird takes place during the Great Depression and is set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. The protagonist of the story is an intelligent though unconventional girl named Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch, to ages from six to nine years during the course of the novel. Their widowed father, Atticus Finch, raise her and her brother Jeremy Atticus (“Jem”). Atticus Finch is a well-known lawyer by profession, and he encourages his children to be and empathetic. He particularly tells them that it is “a sin to kill a mockingbird”, implying to the fact that birds are harmless and innocent creatures.
When one of the town’s black residents, Tom Robinson is falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman, Atticus decides to defend him despite the threats from the community. At one point, Atticus faces a mob intent on knocking off his client, but he refuses to abandon him.
Scout unintentionally diffuses the situation. Even though Atticus presents a dense that gives a more reasonable interpretation with evidence – that the woman, Mayella was attacked by her father, Bob Ewell – Tom is convicted. However later he is killed when he tries to escape custody. A character in the novel compares Tom’s death to “the senseless slaughter of the songbird.” The novel To Kill a Mockingbird showcases both a young girl’s coming-to-age story as well as a darker drama about the roots and consequences of racism and prejudice, exploring how the good and the evil can co-exist in an individual or a community.
Scout’s moral education is bifold – to refrain from abusing others with unfounded negativity but also to preserve these values when they are inevitable and sometimes even violently subverted. The writer has based the character of Atticus Finch on her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, a dedicated and compassionate lawyer. The plot of the novel was inspired by his unsuccessful youthful defence of two African-American men who were convicted for murder.
One character of the novel Charles Baker (“Dill”) Harris, is based on the author’s childhood friend and next-door neighbour in Monroeville, Alabama – Truman Capote. After the extraordinary success of the novel, many suspected that Capote was the real author of Lee’s work. This rumour was put to rest when in 2006, a letter written in 1959 from Capote to his aunt was discovered, stating that he read and liked the draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that Lee had shown him, but there was no mention of any role in writing it.
The novel had inspired numerous adaptations out of which the most notable one was the classic 1962 film that starred Gregory Peck as Atticus. His performance in the movie won him an Academy Award, and it became an enduring part in the history of cinema. There were other adaptations which included a Broadway play that was adapted by Aaron Sorkin and debuted in 2018.
In 2015 Go Set a Watchman was a second novel released by Lee. This had been written before To Kill a Mockingbird but essentially was a sequel that featured Scout as a grown woman now based in New York City who returns to her childhood home, Alabama to visit her father.
