Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird "To Kill a Mocking Bird" by Harper Lee was published in 1960 and was adapted into a play by Christopher Sergal and published in 1980. It tells the story of a court case when a black man gets accused of raping a white woman. The black man, Tom Robinson is defended by the a lawyer called Atticus Finch. Atticus is one of the few people in Maycome who have a bit of money an can read and write very well. The inevitable outcome of the case was that the Black man was sentenced to death. The play is set in 1935 during the Great Depression and in times of Poverty and Unemployment. Maycome is a rural farming community and the Great Depression has hit them hard. The law is very unfair to Blacks because they issue different sentences to White people then to Black people. For example in a court case that court would be made up of all white men. The community is divided as well because all Black services are separate from White services. E.G. Education, money, churches, funerals, graveyards, medical services. However poor a White person is, a Black person would always be lower than the poor white person in the social scale. In the Deep South a man was expected to do manly jobs like Hunting, Carpentry, Farrier and a Blacksmith. Atticus is seamed to different than the other men because he is a lawyer and reads books, unlike most of the other men who do the jobs described above. The Deep South came to be like this because of the slavery White people enforced on the Blacks. In 1619 the first black people were brought to America and then in 1661, Virginia legalised slavery, along with lots of other Deep South states. 35-40 million Blacks were brought to be slaves over 300 years, o... ... middle of paper ... ... up, knowing what Atticus has proved and said damn you ta..." because and every one else knows that it was Bob who hit Mayella because he is left handed. To prove this even more Atticus reminds the court that Bob signed that piece of paper with his left and that Tom took his oath with his only good hand - his right. The next part of Atticus' summing up says about the views of the people in the Deep South, saying about people thinking that all Negroes are bad and all Negroes lie but they all don't and all races lie and are bad sometimes and not just the blacks. "To kill a mockingbird" is a prime example of what life was like during the Great Depression in the Deep South, full of discrimination and social scales determining what people were like and how they would act. I think the story is a very good because of how it describes life during that period.
Scout learned a number of things in the book, but most of them all refer back to a statement that Atticus and Calpurnia said, which goes, “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird because all they do is sing their hearts our for us.” (Lee, pg. 90). Scout learned that about people, too. She learned that some people don’t do anything to you, so it would be a sin to do something mean in return. Over the course of the story Scout becomes more mature and learns the most important facts of life. She was living through a very difficult time and most of that helped her get through.
It was very nice to read something that had a lot of drama and suspense. This story has a mix of everything. It has a bit of suspense, drama, and comedy; therefore, it led it to be a very nice play. The people that would most like this play, has to be people who like suspense, drama, and thriller. These people would like it, because this story has a mix of everything, so the people who like to have a mix in their stories, they will love this story. It will suit them, and will give them a pleasure of reading a nice
One of the principal aims of To Kill a Mockingbird is to subject the narrator to a series of
Childhood is a continuous time of learning, and of seeing mistakes and using them to change your perspectives. In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee illustrates how two children learn from people and their actions to respect everyone no matter what they might look like on the outside. To Kill A Mockingbird tells a story about two young kids named Scout and her older brother Jem Finch growing up in their small, racist town of Maycomb, Alabama. As the years go by they learn how their town and a lot of the people in it aren’t as perfect as they may have seemed before. When Jem and Scout’s father Atticus defends a black man in court, the town’s imperfections begin to show. A sour, little man named Bob Ewell even tries to kill Jem and Scout all because of the help Atticus gave to the black man named Tom Robinson. Throughout the novel, Harper Lee illustrates the central theme that it is wrong to judge someone by their appearance on the outside, or belittle someone because they are different.
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.
The theme of these two chapters is that Dill, and Jem wanted to go to the Radely house to get a peep at Boo Radely through the blinds. Scout feels uneasy about it but despite Jem’s wishes refuses to go home. He gets shot at with a gun while trying to escape. He lost his pants while escaping and when he went back to get them they where laid out on the fence like they where expecting Jem to come back. The next day every body was talking about it, they all thought Mr. Radely shot at a black man but missed. It seemed like Mr. Radely knew it was Jem though. Jem and Nathan Radley each said hi and Mr. Radely was talking about filling his tree with cement even though it was perfectly healthy. Jem found this strange.
Irony is the opposite of what is and what seems to be. Harper Lee uses irony in
Harper Lee’s timeless novel To Kill a Mockingbird is told by Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, a fiery young girl from the quiet town of Maycomb, Alabama. In defiance of the traditionally passive role of Southern women, Scout grew up as a tomboy and, like her older brother Jem, was unafraid to engage other children in physical confrontations. At the onset of the novel, Scout displayed these aggressive tendencies, fighting classmates whom she believed had wronged her or her family. However, Scout developed as a character in the first half of To Kill a Mockingbird to the extent that she was willing to walk away from fights that weren’t worth fighting. Scout’s willingness to engage in combat with other children early on in the novel was evident in the description of her treatment of Walter Cunningham after being punished for explaining his financial situation to her teacher. Scout described this fight, saying, “Catching Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard gave me some pleasure, but when I was rubbing his nose in the dirt Jem came by and told me to stop...Jem said, ‘…Scout here…she won’t fight you anymore.’ ‘I wouldn’t be too certain of that,’ I said” (Lee 30-31). As evidenced by this description, Scout had a quick temper and was just as willing as many of her male classmates to fight others, reflecting the combative sense of justice common to the children of her day. A key tenant of her aggressive morality was an unwillingness to turn away from a fight for fear of being called a coward. Scout held these beliefs throughout the beginning of the novel and fought many other children to defend her reputation. However, through moral instruction from her father, Atticus Finch, Scout was able to abandon much of her aggression. She grew to recognize...
In the book, To Kill a Mockeningbird by Harper lee, Charles Baker Harris, also known as Dill, is one of the most important character. He’s curious, wants attention, and he can be dishonest.
Helen Keller, a deaf and blind writer and lecturer describes life as “a succession of
group in his society. In the quote ." . . If I didn't take this case
Mood helps in creating an atmosphere in a literary work by means of setting, theme, diction and tone. Throughout the book To kill a mockingbird the author wanted the mood to be sorrowful or vexed or just fret about how the people are acting because seeing how things were being treated or how people acted would be enough to make you feel angry or sad or worried for the people who were in the book. You always wanted to know what was going to come next or how something would end. Vex was a very prominent mood in this story and is definitely the most relevant.
In the opening chapters of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Harper Lee introduces several subtle instances of racism. However, when Jem and Scout are welcomed into Cal’s Church in chapter 12, the reader really gets to travel behind the false disguise of Maycomb County’s white society to see the harsh realities of the injustices suffered by the blacks. The black community is completely separate from the whites -- in fact, Cal lives in a totally different part of town!
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee seems like a complete replica of the lives of people living in a small Southern U.S. town. The themes expressed in this novel are as relevant today as when this novel was written, and also the most significant literary devices used by Lee. The novel brings forward many important themes, such as the importance of education, recognition of inner courage, and the misfortunes of prejudice. This novel was written in the 1930s. This was the period of the “Great Depression” when it was very common to see people without jobs, homes and food. In those days, the rivalry between the whites and the blacks deepened even more due to the competition for the few available jobs. A very famous court case at that time was the Scottsboro trials. These trials were based on the accusation against nine black men for raping two white women. These trials began on March 25, 1931. The Scottsboro trials were very similar to Tom Robinson’s trial. The similarities include the time factor and also the fact that in both cases, white women accused black men.
In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the main characters: Atticus, Scout and Jem were faced with many losing battles such as Tom Robinson's case, the "mad dog incident" and Mrs. Dubose's addiction to morphine. This builds on the theme of there are things in life that won't go your way. The book takes place in the 1930's or 1940's in a small town in Alabama called Maycomb. The novel takes us through the life and perils that the main characters undergo and teach us about growing up and being mature.