Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Harper Lee was an American novelist who is known for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. To Kill a Mockingbird was published on July 11, 1960, and it became a huge success. The novel is of the South Gothic genre which deals with the issues of racial discrimination from the viewpoint of two little kids. The novel deals with rape, racial inequality, class discrimination, courage, compassion, and gender roles in the Deep South during the period of 1930s. The Deep South of the United States included those states that were heavily dependent on plantations and slavery. The story is about two siblings, their extraordinary experiences, and how they grow up while losing their innocence.
The story was based on the real-life experiences of Harper Lee during her childhood. Her father Amasa Coleman Lee was a newspaper editor and a lawyer who once defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both clients, a father, and his son, were hanged. The plot and characters of the novel are loosely based on Harper Lee’s own experiences with her family, friends, and relatives, and an incident that happened in her hometown in Monroeville, Alabama in 1936. Lee's older brother Edwin was the inspiration for the character of Jem. Harper Lee was a childhood friend of Truman Capote and she assisted him in writing his renowned novel In Cold Blood. Truman Capote became the inspiration for the character of Dill. Truman once commented that the character of Boo Radley was also a real man whom he and Harper Lee knew.
Characters of To Kill The Mocking Bird:
Scout or Jean Louise Finch is the narrator and main character of the novel. She is a 6 years old girl with a tomboyish attitude. She has a fierce disposition towards any who challenge her, but at heart, she is innocent, sympathetic, and a believer in goodness. Jem, or Jeremy Finch is 10 years old, the elder brother of Scout. Jem is a quieter and more reserved and innocent child. Dill Harris or Charles Baker Harris is a friend of Scout and Jem. He is around 7 years old with an adventurous and imaginative attitude. After her father’s death, Dill’s mother remarries but Dill fails to adjust to the new family conditions and often tries to escape from it. Thus, he spends his holidays with his aunt, who lives next door to the Finch family. Atticus Finch is a widower, and father of Scout and Jem. He is a lawyer who is highly morally upright and tries to be fair with everyone. After the death of his wife, he raises his children with the assistance of Calpurnia, his black housekeeper and cook. Calpurnia is a motherly figure for Scout and Jem. Arthur “Boo” Radley is a recluse who always remains within his house. He had a difficult childhood and it is rumored that once he attacked his father with a pair of scissors and since then no one has seen him. The townspeople consider him a mad monster. He lives with his elder brother Nathan Radley who is highly controlling. Tom Robinson is a black man who is accused of raping a white girl named Myella Ewell. He asks help of Atticus Finch who agrees to defend him because he believes that Tom is innocent. Aunt Alexandra is Atticus’s elder sister who is a strict traditional woman. She visits Atticus’s house to assist him in raising his kids well. Maudi Atkinson is a friendly neighbor of Atticus Finch. She is a proud and courageous woman who loves gardening and helps the kids gain a proper perspective on the events surrounding the trial. Bob Ewell is the father of Myella Ewell. He is a racist, ignorant, and evil person who belongs to the lowest substratum of Maycomb society. He is a widower with nine children. He caught his daughter kissing Tom, proceeded to beat her, and then forced her to claim Tom raped her. Myella Ewell is a lonely girl of nineteen. Belonging to a poor family, she is despised by whites and prohibited from befriending blacks. Frustrated, she tries to seduce Tom and break a social taboo. However, when she gets caught, she acts cowardly and accuses Tom of rape and perjuries against him in court. Miss Caroline is a school teacher of Scout and Jem. Francis is one of Aunt Alexandra’s grandchildren who spends Christmas leaves with the Finch family and annoys Scout by being boring and cruel. Uncle Jack is Atticus’s brother who is a doctor. Jem and Scout are very fond of Uncle Jack. Mrs. Dubose is a mean old lady who is very sick. She got addicted to morphine. Walter is a classmate of Scout. Mr. Cunningham is the father of Walter whom Scout recognizes in the mob that came to attack Tom and Atticus. Heck Tate is Maycomb Counties' sheriff who is an honest and upright man.
Summary of To Kill a Mockingbird:
The novel is set in the period of the Great Depression during the 1930s. Scout Finch lives with her brother Jem and father Atticus Finch in the fictitious town of Maycomb, Alabama. It is a small town where everybody knows each other but they have their social connection according to their economic conditions and birth. Atticus is a morally upright lawyer who earns enough to support his family but has to work hard for long hours. He lost his wife and takes care of his children with the help of his black servant and cook Calpurnia who is a motherly figure for the kids. However, Scout feels Calpurnia is too much strict and she favors Jem.
One summer, Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill, who has come to live in their neighborhood for the summer. The three spend much of their time creating and acting out fantasies. Scout and Jem know the neighborhood well. The only neighbor who puzzles them is the mysterious Arthur Radley, nicknamed Boo, who never comes outside. Dill, being too imaginative continues to enquire about Boo and the three kids become obsessed with the house called Radley House where Boo lives with his brother Nathan Radley. Dill learns the story that during his childhood, Boo once stabbed his father’s leg with scissors and since then he has been jailed in that house and never comes out. Jem and Scout have never seen him but they have heard that he is incredibly tall, drools, and eats neighborhood cats and squirrels. Though all children are fearful of Boo, Dill challenges Jem to go and touch the boundary of Radley's house. When Jem does so, Scout says that she saw someone watching them from inside behind a curtain. They try leaving notes for Boo on his windowsill with a fishing pole but are caught by Atticus, who firmly reprimands them for making fun of a sad man's life. However, the kids continue to explore more about Boo.
As the summer vacations end, Dill returns to his hometown. Scout is big enough to join the school. Though she is excited about going to school, she soon starts disliking it. Her teacher Miss Caroline is teaching how to read the alphabet and write but Scout already can read words and sentences. Miss Caroline criticizes her for already knowing how to read and forbids her from writing in cursive. She returns home and complains to Atticus. Her father tells him that Miss Caroline is a new teacher and she will take time in learning how to deal with the eccentricities of various kids. Atticus tells her to understand others’ viewpoints by putting herself in their shoes and thinking like them.
Summer arrives and Dill returns back to Maycomb. The three kids continue their exploration of the Radley house. One night, the three kids decide to jump over the boundary of the Radley house and sneak in through the window. Nathan Radley thinks that some burglar is trying to get in and he fires his gun. The three kids get frightened and run away but while running back, Jem Jem loses his pants in a fence. When he returns in the middle of the night to get them back, they have been neatly folded and the tear from the fence roughly sewn up. The pants were kept folded in the hole of the tree near the Radley house.
The kids continue to inspect the Radley house regularly. Jem and Scout find more presents in a hole in that tree, presumably left by the mysterious Boo. Jem would go to the tree near the fence of Radley's house to get presents such as pennies, chewing gum, and soap-carved figures of a little boy and girl who bear a striking resemblance to Scout and Jem. One day, they decide to leave a thank note to the gift giver. But the next day when Jem goes to the tree, he finds that Nathan Radley has plugged up the hole with cement. That saddens the kids.
Dill returns back after the vacation. The next winter brings unexpected cold and snow. During such a cold, Miss Maudie's house catches on fire. While Jem and Scout, shivering, watch the blaze from near the Radley house, someone puts a blanket around Scout without her realizing it. When the kids find it out, Jem suggests that Boo must have put that blanket on Scout. This horrifies Scout but her father calms her down.
Atticus learns about a criminal case in which Tom Robinson, a young black man is accused of raping Myella Ewell, a nineteen-year-old white girl. Nobody is willing to take the case of Tom as a defending lawyer. The court thus appoints Atticus as Tom’s lawyer. When Atticus meets Tom, he realizes that Tom is innocent. He further enquires and comes to know that Myella Ewell is the daughter of Bob Ewell who is a mean and cringy white man whom nobody likes. Furthermore, Bob belongs to the lowest economic class of Maycomb and hence, nobody really wishes to have any relationship with him. Like Atticus, Bob is also a widower with nine kids and Myella is the eldest of them. He learns that despite being nineteen years old, Myella doesn’t have any friends because the white community of Maycomb despises her for being poor and the daughter of Bob who is a poor and mean person. Any kind of friendly relationship between white persons and black persons is totally prohibited in the society of Maycomb and thus, Myella is lonely and alienated despite being a white girl. When she meets Tom and finds him near her, she tries to seduce him by trying to kiss him while breaking the societal taboo. However, Tom wasn’t ready for any such prohibited relationship and when he tried to push Myella away to avoid the kiss, Bob Ewell suddenly reached home and caught them in the act. In anger, Bob started beating Myella brutally right in front of Tom. Tom got frightened and ran away. Later on, Bob forced Myella to accuse Tom of rape. Though Myella took the first step against the societal taboo, she proved to be a coward against her father’s anger and followed him and agreed to perjury in court against Tom.
Atticus is a morally upright man and he decided to defend Tom in court though he knows that the jury, being predominantly white and prejudiced against the black community will not allow Tom to go free. Yet, he thinks that his efforts in bringing the truth in front will ease the hatred against black people and will reduce the discrimination to some extent. Little does he know that because of his decision, the white community of Maycomb will become his enemy and the enemy of his kids. Meanwhile, Dill Harris also comes to Maycomb as he runs away from the prospect of spending the vacation with his new father whom his mother recently married. Jem and Scout are subjected to abuse from other children, even when they celebrate Christmas at the family compound on Finch’s landing. Francis, one of the grandchildren of Aunt Alexandra teases Scout and tells her that her father brought a bad name and shame to their family by being a “nigger-lover”. Though Atticus urges Scout and Jem to keep calm even when other kids abuse them, Scout fails to control her anger and beats Francis. Francis complains about her misbehavior to Uncle Jack whom every child loves. Scout tries to tell him how Francis abused her and her father but Uncle Jack refuses to listen and punishes her. However, Uncle Jack gives an air rifle to each Scout and Jem which makes them happy. They take their rifles to Atticus and ask him to teach them how to use them. Atticus refuses to teach them how to shoot. While he allows them to play with the rifles, he advises them that it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Even Jem, who is much more calm and reserved finds it difficult when Mrs. Dubose starts abusing his father in front of him. Initially, he tries to avoid and ignore Mrs.Dubose but one day when she hurls slurs and insults at him about Atticus defending Tom Robinson. Jem retaliates by cutting the tops off of her beloved camellia bushes. Mrs. Dubose then complains to Atticus about this and demands that Jem should read for her for an hour every day after his school, for a month. Atticus insists that Jem should accept the punishment and he does. Scout suggests that she will also accompany Jem to Mrs. Dubose’s house. Jem and Scout do not realize until after she dies that they are helping her break her morphine addiction. After her death, Atticus reveals that Mrs. Dubose was a brave old and lonely woman who needed someone to help him in getting rid of her addiction. Jem provided her that assistance by reading to her. Calpurnia takes them to the local Black church, where the warm and close-knit community largely embraces the children.
When the time of the final trial of Tom comes closer, Atticus’s elder sister Aunt Alexandra comes to know about this, she visits Atticus’s home to help him in keeping good care of the children. Scout doesn’t like Alexandra much because Alexandra is a strict traditional lady who tries to convert Scout from a tomboy to girlish. The night before the trial, Tom is moved into the county jail, and Atticus, fearing a possible lynching, stands guard outside the jail door all night. Jem is concerned about him, and the three children sneak into town to find him. A group of men arrive ready to cause some violence to Tom and threaten Atticus in the process. At first Jem, Scout, and Dill stand aside, but when she senses true danger, Scout runs out and begins to speak to one of the men, the father of one of her classmates in school. Her innocence brings the crowd out of their mob mentality, and they leave.
During the trial, Ewell’s family put forth their evidence. Their statement was that when Bob Ewell was away from his home, Tom came for some household work. Myella was alone at that time and forcibly beat and raped Mayella until her father appeared and scared him away. Atticus argues against this accusation and says that all the marks of bruises on Myella’s face were on the right side of her face, which means she was most likely punched with a left hand. Tom Robinson's left arm is useless due to an old accident, whereas Mr. Ewell leads with his left. Indirectly, he accuses Bob of brutally beating his daughter. The jury notices that Tom’s left hand is useless because of an old injury and there is enough doubt about him being a culprit. People of the black community think that Tom will be freed but after hours of deliberation, the jury pronounces him guilty. Scout, Jem, and Dill sneak into the courthouse to see the trial and sit on the balcony with Maycomb's black population. They are stunned at the verdict because, to them, the evidence was so clearly in Tom's favor. Atticus is still happy that by his logical defense, he forced the jury to take so long for pronouncing the decision. Usually, the decision would be made in minutes, because a black man's word would not be trusted. Atticus thinks about making an appeal and deliberating the jury to reconsider their decision. However, Tom gets frightened of punishment and tries to escape from his prison and is shot to death in the process. Both Scout and Jem are sad about the outcome of the trial as they sense the defeat of their father as the defeat of goodness.
Bob Ewell on the other hand, is angry over Atticus for confronting him and trying to expose him in front of the jury. He decides to take revenge and one night, when Jem and Scout are walking home from the Halloween play at their school, he follows them home in the dark, then runs at them and attempts to kill them with a large kitchen knife. Jem tries to defend themself while Scout, who is wearing a confining ham-shaped wire costume and cannot see what is going on, is helpless throughout the attack. Jem is still a child and cannot do much against Bob Ewell. At the same time, a mysterious man in a black hood comes to the children’s rescue. He snatches Bob’s knife from him and stabs him with that while saving the kids. Jem realizes that the mysterious man is Boo Radley. Boo then take the kids to their home. When Atticus comes to know about it, he informs Hedck Tate, the county sheriff. Mr. Tate Mr. Tate decides to keep Boo's involvement in Mr. Ewell's death quiet. He notes in his file that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife during an alcoholic stupor and thus died. Atticus is not happy about it as he wants Boo Radley to face trial. However, Scout explains to him that Boo Madley is like a mockingbird and that punishing him would be like killing a mockingbird. Scout walks Boo home and imagines how he has viewed the town and observed her, Jem, and Dill over the years from inside his home. Boo goes inside, closes the door, and Scout never sees him again.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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