To Kill A Mockingbird

I finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) by Nelle Harper Lee (better known as Harper Lee), though I watched the film several times.  (I almost always find it better to read a book after I watched a film adapted from it.  When I read a book first, I am usually disappointed by the film adaptation.)

I most enjoyed the outstanding writing this book displays.  Harper Lee constructed every line, every paragraph, every chapter very carefully.  She not only renders wonderful descriptions, she carefully structures a story that keeps you entertained, attentive, and eager to learn the lessons the story offers through its characters.

By using the perspective of the children, and especially Scout (Jean Louise Finch), the main character, it reminds you of your childhood.  However, Lee tempers this perspective because Scout narrates the story as an adult woman, reflecting back on her childhood.

(Nelle) Harper Lee

Harper Lee never wrote another book, and this became her only book.  Her one book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.  It still remains a bestseller, with 30 million copies in print.  In 1999, a poll conducted by the Library Journal voted it "Best Novel of the Century."  For this one book, President George W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.

Harper Lee got to write the book because friends she knew gave her a Christmas present in 1956 of a full year's wages along with a note, "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas."  It shows the power of believing in someone you recognize has talent and supporting them.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

The story reflects many aspects of Harper Lee's childhood growing up in the South in the 1930s, including the racial prejudice of that time in that place.  However, a major theme Lee promotes in the story involves the moral education of Scout, and her brother, Jem, by their father, Atticus.  Atticus teaches not only by telling his children - he shows what he teaches by what he does - by providing an example by how he lives his life.


Atticus tells Scout, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.  He later demonstrates this by not reacting when someone spits in his face and calls him terrible names, daring him to fight.  He later explains to Jem, troubled by his father's lack of reaction, that he understood this man was frustrated and had to take it out on someone - and that he would rather have him take it out on himself rather than that man take it out on his own children.  Later in the story, Scout learns to look at the world from the perspective of Boo Radley, someone she was scared of earlier in the story.


If you have not read this book before, I encourage you to do so.  If you have not read it in awhile (many read it as a school assignment), I suggest you reread it.  You may find you have a different perspective on it now.