TITLE: To Kill A Mockingbird
AUTHOR: Harper Lee
GENRE: Novel
Date of Publication: 1960’s
Plot
“To Kill a mockingbird” by Harper Lee is set in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the middle of the Great Depression.The narrator, six-year-old Scout Finch, lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. The three are terrified by, and fascinated with, their neighbor, the reclusive “Boo” Radley. Atticus is assigned to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. Although many of Maycomb’s people disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability.
Atticus establishes that the are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella was making sexual advances towards Tom and that her father caught her in the act. Despite significant evidence of Tom’s innocence, he is convicted. Jem’s faith in justice is badly shaken, as is Atticus, when a hopeless Tom is hot and killed while trying to escape from prison. Bob Ewell is humiliated by the trial and vows revenge. Finally, he attacks the defenseless Jem and Scout as they walk home from a Halloween pageant at their school. Jem’s arm is broken in struggle, but some comes to their rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout eventually recognizes him as the reclusive Boo Radley.
The Essay on Atticus Finch Jem And Scout 2
... Jem and Scout learned that you could not always believe everything you hear. The town was made aware that, although Tom was black, Atticus ... to jail, where Tom was kept because many white people wanted to kill him. Worrying about their father, Jem and Scout sneak out of ... Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior, ...
SETTING
It is set in Southern town of Maycomb in the 1930s when poverty and unemployment were common in the United States. The Great Depression meant only that the bad times that had been going on for years got a sightly worse. These rural areas had long been poor and undeveloped. black people worked for low wages in the fields all day. Despite its civic it is a place where time seems to stand still. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. “There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.”
Character
One of t he main characters in this novel is Scout. She has many experiences with the prejudices dealing with race, which will be carried with her through her later life. Scout is a young girl living throughout the Great Depression in the early 1930’s. Scout is a tomboy. Sometimes her brother criticizes her for “acting like a girl,” other times he complains that she’s not girlish enough. Dill wants to marry her, but that doesn’t mean he wants to spend time with her. Many of the boys at school are intimidated by her physical strength, yet she is told she must learn to handle herself in a ladylike way. She hates school because in many ways it actually inhibits her learning. Her teacher is appalled that she already knows how to read, instead of celebrating that fact. She is bored waiting for the rest of the class to catch up to her skill level, and she doesn’t have more than a passing respect for either of the teachers she describes in the story.
The most sympathy she can muster toward a frazzled Miss Caroline is to remark “Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her.” And she is offended by Miss Gates’ comments about African Americans after her staunch and moving support for the Jew’s in Hitler’s Europe.
The Essay on How People Learn
They come to proper education with a range of prior knowledge, skills, theories, and ideas that knowingly influence what they notice about the surroundings and how they establish and understand it. This affects their capabilities to recall, solve complications, and obtain new knowledge. (National Academy of Sciences, 2004) New expansions in the science of learning also highlight the significance ...
In this novel she is shown to be both questioner and observer. she asks tough questions, because she is a child therefore is allowed. Scout learns many things from Atticus defending a black person and basically proving him guilty. The main lesson shows her that no matter what whether a person is black or white, they should be treated equally. She learns this because Atticus has no problem defending Tom Robinson and even proves him innocent, he just would not be found innocent because he is black.
Scout’s experiences of getting into trouble with Calpurnia, their cook, are shown in the author’s use of simile and humour “her (Calpurnia’s) hand was as wide as a bed slate and twice as hard.” This helps the reader to imagine Scout’s naughtiness and feel her pain and indignation at being spanked
THEME
The theme’s of the novel are the following; Prejudice, Innocence and Contrasts. Prejudice is one of the themes in the story because most of the chapters on the novel shows that people judged easily based from what they know and what they look like. The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humility to think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord’s kindness am I.” Miss Maudie’s old crispness was returning: “The handful of people in this town with background, that’s who they are.” Innocence is also one of the themes because the narrator Scout doesn’t have any clue of what’s happening on the world and how things work on the world which makes the Story line interesting. Lastly, Contrasts is shown by Jem on the part which he grows up and learns how to be mature and how to react on things maturely.
RELATE TO YOUR THEME
This novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” relates back to the theme what does it mean to be a man/woman in society as Harper Lee shows these lessons through a child’s perspective, which creates a more graphic description of the character Scout. For her she will learn these lessons young as a child, changing how she will react to such experiences as an adult. Scout’s character is portrayed as a young girl being influenced by close outside forces, creating her to be more of an individual; constructing her own opinions and ideas such as not letting people change her as a person also not letting people feel pity for her and bad about herself. “Had her conduct been friendlier towards me, I would have felt sorry for her.” I strongly agree what the author view of racism as humans should not be judged on the colour of their skin and be judged like a book by its cover when surely not knowing what’s inside. I believe it is unnecessary to jump straight in to conclusion based on sole perception. I’ve learned that in 1960’s in America, black people didn’t have the justice and law, that black people were blackmailed also they did not have the right to defend themselves on the court. I learned to have equal rights against races and to be fair and give respect to different types of races on the World.
The Essay on What Does Scout Learn At The End Of To Kill A Mocking Bird?
Throughout the novel, The Kill A Mockingbird, the narrator, Scout, who is only three years old at the beginning, grows up to understand the evils of the society in the 1930s. Her mind is full of fun and excitement, but as important events unfold in Maycomb, she begins to discover themes such as racism and prejudice as she grows older that would have seemed meaningless to her during the beginning ...