To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

THE WRITER

Harper Lee was born in 1926 and grew up in the Southern town of Monroeville, Alabama during segregation. She attended Huntingdon College and then studied law at the University of Alabama, writing short stories for campus magazines about racial injustice, a taboo subject at that time. She also spent a year at Oxford University as an exchange student.

In 1950, Lee moved to New York, where she worked as a reservation clerk for an airline company and soon began writing essays and sketches about people in Monroeville. A literary editor she found through her friend and fellow writer, Truman Capote, advised her to leave her job and concentrate on writing. In 1959, Lee accompanied Capote to Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for Capote's classic 'non-fiction' novel In Cold Blood (1966).

Lee spent two and a half years writing To Kill a Mockingbird, at one point becoming so frustrated that she tossed the manuscript out the window into the snow! Her agent made her retrieve it. The book was published in 1960 but the editorial team at Lippincott warned Lee that she would probably sell only several thousand copies. Instead the book became one of the best-selling novels of all time, nationally and internationally, and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961.

In 1964, virtually the last time she gave interviews, Lee recalled that she hoped only for encouragement. The ¨quick, merciful death" she expected from reviewers never came and the book has never been out of print, since its first publicaton. In spite of the novel´s success, Lee did not continue her literary career, although she worked for years on a second novel and a book of nonfiction. She returned from New York to Monroeville, where she has lived with her sister Alice ever since.

In 2007, Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by George Bush.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

The characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbours and the plot on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with serious issues of rape and racial injustice. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explained the novel's impact by writing, "in the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America.¨ However Atticus (based on Lee´s father) is not a campaigner for racial equality, but, more than anything, someone who upholds the principle of ´´equality before the law.¨ and human decency.

The trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman, whom no one but Atticus is willing to defend in the Alabama of the 30s, is at the heart of the novel´s action and acts as a lightning rod for an examination of the racial and class prejudices of the South. There are no easy solutions and the truth does not change the fate of Tom Robinson, who is convicted anyway and later murdered.

However courage is defined in the novel as fighting even though you may have lost before you start and is as important in small things as in big. Atticus also marks the contrast between the good and bad father in the novel and between parental authority won by modeling integrity and respect for others and parental power exercised over children through bullying and abuse. Calpurnia is also a model of dignity and courage, who provides context and structure in the children´s lives.

However the point of view is that of the child, Scout, and the story is told amid her own playground battles for her integrity and self-respect. Scout is one of the most likeable children in fiction, perhaps because she gets to tell her own story without cant, inspiring affection and respect for her guts and character.

Some critics have identified Boo Radley as the mockingbird of the title and Scout´s moral progress as defined by her attitude towards him – from using him for her private games to finally respecting his mysterious humanity.

QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT WHILE READING

The book is widely taught in English speaking classrooms in lessons that examine equality and justice. Yet the book has always been controversial as a school text and its presence in public libraries has been challenged since its publication. How have the grounds for challenge changed? In which ways was/is the novel ´´unsuitable´´ for children?

Critics have noted that the book is far more popular with white than with black readers. Although the villains are white, so are the heroes. Are the black characters portrayed in the same depth and with the same degree of agency as the white characters? Or are they portrayed as passive victims?

Scout resists the pressure to become a ´´ Southern lady´´ Who are her role models? What kind of woman do you think she will become?