Our past influences everything we do; from day to day life, to the creative projects we share with the world. This certainly holds true for Harper Lee and Albert Camus, both of whom are authors of award winning novels. These authors allowed their backgrounds to shine through in their writing. Even though some points are more obvious than others, it is easy to find references to the authors’ lives in their stories. Harper Lee grew up in a small town in southern Alabama while the Great Depression was at its worst. The fictional Maycomb County, the main setting of Lee’s only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, could easily have been modeled after her own hometown. Many other details throughout the book can be compared with Lee’s childhood. Ms. Lee was reported as being “tougher than many of the boys” growing up as she defended her childhood friend, Truman Capote, who was made fun of for being “sissy” ("Nelle Harper Lee"). In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee morphed into the main character of Scout, and Capote became Dill, a scrawny boy who stays in Maycomb County during the summers. The parallel is evident in chapter nine, when Scout punches her cousin for insulting Dill and her dad, Atticus, who is modeled after Lee’s …show more content…
Arguably one of the most memorable scenes of To Kill a Mockingbird is the case of Tom Robinson, a Negro accused of raping a young white girl, and whom Atticus is charged with defending. Ms. Lee’s father was given the job of defending two black men prosecuted for the apparent murder of a white storekeeper (“Amasa Coleman Lee…”). In the end, neither lawyer succeed and the African Americans are hanged. Scout Finch receives grief throughout the novel for having a “nigger-lover” as a father, and it is assumed Ms. Lee did, as well (Lee, 94). Many experiences in Harper Lee’s life influenced the story of Scout
Jem and Scout, throughout “To Kill A Mockingbird,” learn to consider things from other people’s perspectives. Atticus, Jem and Scout’s father, says “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” (Lee 39). They learn this through experiences with their neighbor Boo Radley as they mature beyond their years. At the beginning of the novel, Jem and Scout make fun of Boo and assume that all of the rumors going around about him are true. However, later on in the story the children grow an admiration for Boo and learn to understand him. As they matured, Jem and Scout naturally learned many life lessons of appreciation, respect, and courage
In Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird , she recalls her experiences as a six-year-old child from an adult perspective. Scout describes the circumstances of her widowed father, Atticus, and his legal defense of Tom Robinson. Robinson was a local black man accused of raping a white woman, which arose many ethics between society. Throughout the three years surrounding the trial, Scout and Jem, witnessed the unjust consequences of prejudice and hate. Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird was published during the Civil Rights movement, and was used to implicate a Southern racist society by using rhetorical appeals and devices. Throughout the book , Harper Lee reveals her ideas concerning racial prejudice, faith in justice, and the goodness of
“If there’s just one king of folks, why can’t they get along with each other?” (Lee 259). These words were spoken by Jem Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. In Harper Lee’s novel, Jem has a loss of innocence, a repeated theme in the book; this happens during the Tom Robinson trial, from Jem’s mood, and because of the character, Boo Radley.
Yet Perry’s childhood bliss was taken from him, somehow creating his current disposition, the true purpose is the falling of unity from inside the people of Holcomb, therefore; pinning every person against another. A dark curtain that falls over the children, parents, farmhands, hunting regulars, and police officials. A curtain that keeps them apart from one another because they are lost in the infinite blackness that surrounds them, an evil they let seep into their minds and imaginations.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a realistic fiction that highlights the idea of empathy and injustice from the perspective of a little girl named Scout. This novel takes place in the 1930s in Maycomb, a town in Alabama. Scout has an older brother, Jem, and a father named Atticus. Atticus is a lawyer who defends an African American man named Tom Robinson who has been falsely accused of sexual assaulting a young woman named Mayella. Harper Lee uses misunderstood characters to show the idea that prejudice, stereotypes, and rumors often do not encompass the entirety of a persons’ character.
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the central figure, Scout, faces conflicts as she tries to understand prejudice and how it leads to the death of Tom Robinson. The childhood innocence of growing up in Maycomb in which Scout is accustomed to is threatened by numerous incidents that expose the evil side of human nature. The guilty verdict in the trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman, Tom Robinson, is most notable. Scout’s father, Atticus, is defending Tom, and because Tom is black, Scout faces comments against her father and her family. “‘My folks said your daddy was a disgrace an’ that nigger oughta hang from the water-tank’” (Lee, 102) Scout encounters comments at school about her father. These comments make Scout question
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by a beloved author, Harper Lee. Despite dealing with serious issues of rape and racial inequality, this novel is renowned for its moral in the value of friendship and family. Lee writes about a young girl, Jean Louise Finch, who is also acknowledged as Scout. Scout grows up in the small fictional town of Maycomb County in the 1930s. She lives with her older brother Jem, their housekeeper Calpurnia, and her widowed father who is an attorney that is faithful to racial equality and later on defends Tom Robinson, a black man charged with raping a white woman. Scout has a basic faith in her community that they are good people but then throughout the novel especially during
Racial discrimination, although not the main focus of To Kill a Mockingbird, plays a large role throughout the novel. Many characters in To Kill a Mockingbird are affected by racial discrimination, whether they are the cause or not. Throughout the novel, three characters stand out as being affected by racial discrimination the most. These characters are Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, Atticus Finch, and Tom Robinson.
Oswalt pg:1 pd:2 To Kill A Mockingbird Literary Analysis Ever heard the saying “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”? Have you ever read the book “To Kill A Mockingbird”? Well the writer Harper Lee does a fabulous job explaining this saying throughout the book and involving a “Mockingbird” around almost every corner. In “To Kill A Mockingbird” Harper Lee portrays motif and symbolism throughout the coming of age of Scout and Jem.
Scout, a character from To Kill A Mockingbird, grows up in the three years that is covered in the story. When the story starts out, Scout is innocent and her sense of good and bad seems uncomplicated. In the end, Scout’s world as she understood became more complex and she has lost her innocence. Prejudice, hatred, and violence became her questions as she could not make sense of them. Scout eventually, through the course of events, came to accept that the town of Maycomb, Alabama harbors evil, such as racism and prejudice. Just like Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, defended an African-American man who was found guilty, so did Harper Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee. When Harper Lee was six years old, the Scottsboro Trial took place. She has seen racism going in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Many innocent African-Americans of today face racism and even deaths for no reason by policemen.
The book "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a story of life in an Alabama town in the 30's. The narrator, Jean Louise Finch, or Scout, is writing of a time when she was young, and the book is in part the record of a childhood, believed to be Harper Lee’s, the author of the book..
In this novel, one of the most important and referred to themes is the transition of the characters from innocent adolescent to experienced young adult. When I was exploring the potentially great artistic works I could conjure up, I tried to expand my thoughts and create something that captured the idea of inculpability to understanding.
Critical Review of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird is set during the 1930's in a small, isolated
When I read To Kill a Mockingbird, I gained a deeper understanding of not just what was happening American society in the 1930s, but also what the atmosphere of racism and judgement truly felt like. The perspective of a young girl who was figuring out the meaning behind the way her town worked expressed the truth of American views in a brilliant way. To Kill a Mockingbird wonderfully revealed a wide variety of perspectives that helped the reader have empathy for all the characters, even the ones that they weren’t fond of. The author, Harper Lee, tied the main theme of the book together by repeatedly comparing different situations to killing a mockingbird. I really enjoyed reading To Kill a Mockingbird because it was an interesting and eloquent story.
Sometimes, the less mature mind is more persuasive than one that is more developed. The younger mind may not know everything about the world, however other minds of similar age are drawn to the other’s ideas. These thoughts compel the child more than the more complex thoughts of their elders. It is shown that friends are more influential than parents through the diction in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and a drowning in the Umpqua River in Oregon.