Many books written today are influenced by an author's life. An author's childhood, career, places they’ve went, and people in their lives can be a big influence on how a book turns out. One of these many authors, was Harper Lee. Harper Lee’s first book, To Kill a Mockingbird, won many awards. Her book, were works of Southern Gothic, coming-of-age, and Bildungsroman but, they have a story behind it. The story, is Harper Lee’s life. Harper Lee’s childhood, success, and aspiring career gave her inspiration to write the novel To Kill A Mockingbird.
Nelle Harper Lee, known as Harper Lee, was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, and was the youngest of four children. Growing up in a small town as a tomboy, she tended to be like her female narrator Scout Finch: a
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precious, independent, tomboy, and tougher than most boys. She showed her strength at times when she stood up for her friend, Truman Capote, who inspired the character Dill in her novel. Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a lawyer, a member of the Alabama state legislature, and owned part of a newspaper company. Importantly, Lee’s father also inspired the character Atticus Finch in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird. When Lee started High School, she developed an interest in english literature. After graduating in 1944, she went to the all-female Huntington College in Montgomery for one year. After that, she transferred out of the all-female college,and transferred to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. During her time at the University of Alabama, Lee began to write satires, editorials, and reviews for campus publications. During her junior year at the University, Lee joined the law school there. Joining the law school would have helped her get a law degree, which then would have helped her join the law firm with her father but, after a year there, Lee told her family she didn’t want to be in law, instead she wanted to be a writer. After leaving the university Harper Lee, then 23 moved to New York City to start her writing career. To support herself financially, Lee worked as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines for a few years. After those few years, encouraged by newly made friends, and also an agent that was very interested in her, she quit her job and moved into an apartment, and gave herself fulltime to writing. Writing day and night, Lee wrote five manuscripts, and showed them all to her agent, Maurice Crain, she replied to lee asking her to expand one of her written manuscripts, into a novel. In 1957, Lee submitted the re-written manuscript to the J.P. Lippincott publishing house, and Lee was told by the editors that “It read more like a string of loosely connected short stories than a focused piece of long fiction. (J.P. LIppincott)” Harper Lee, then spent more than two years rewriting the manuscript. In 1960, the fully written manuscript was published, and it became the bestseller novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Above all, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch quotes “The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.
(Lee Chapter 23)” This quote was said during the case trial in To Kill A Mockingbird. In the novel, Atticus Finch, Scout and Jem Finch’s father, would serve as a defense lawyer for Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Tom Robinson, being the color black in a racist Alabama, Tom already had his fate sealed. People saw him guilty for “raping” Mayella Ewell. Scout Finch, during the Tom Robinson trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, was six years old but, Harper Lee’s idea for this case trial, was influenced by the 1931 Scottsboro Trials.
The Scottsboro Trials were based on the alleged rape of two white girls raped by nine black teenagers on a southern train. The first trial for the nine boys took place twelve days after their arrest, and they were tried in groups two and three. In the end, all the boys were found guilty of rape, and sentenced to death. One of the boys were 13, and received a mistrial considering he was the
youngest. The cases were then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who overturned the boys convictions based on the case of Powell vs Alabama. In result, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the right of the nine boys under the Fourteenth Amendment, which resulted in new trials. For the next trial, Samuel Leibowitz, a lawyer from the North, served as the main defense attorney for the boys. Although he tried to prove the boy's innocent, he was not accepted by southern juries. Due to the boys being black in a racist environment in Alabama, their fates were sealed but, in 1937, during the fourth trial, four of the boys were found innocent. Over the decade, four more of the boys were released due to appeals. The last boy, escaped from work prison in 1948, and fled. Harper Lee, being five at the time of the trial, was surrounded by the news of this trial, which impacted her life, and reflected in her novel. How it reflects in her novel is that it gives it shows of the racism she went though during her time, and that it was not fair how those boys were treated, just because of the color of their skin. In conclusion, Harper Lee’s childhood, success, and aspiring career influenced her work when it came to To Kill A Mockingbird. The names places, and characters go together with her childhood, and show through anything, life is the biggest inspiration.
3. My teacher gave a test a week; a predilection that most of the class disliked.
“[T]here is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller; the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court” (Lee 233). These are the words uttered by Atticus Finch, an important character in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus is a lawyer, and at this point in the novel, he is trying to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who was accused of raping a white woman. This reflects upon how society was in the 1930’s, when the color of your skin affected your chances of winning a trial. In fact, it is speculated that To Kill a Mockingbird is loosely based off of the trials of the Scottsboro Boys, a famous case from this time period. Most of the main characters associated with both trials share similar traits, experiences, and backgrounds.
one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it is a sin to
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. You know Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was misperceived at first. All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names, but after he led Santa’s sleigh, they loved him. Misperceptions like this happen all throughout Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. As you read the novel you see original judgments made about characters transform into new conceptions and new understandings. Some characters twist your views of them on purpose, others do it involuntarily. To Kill a Mockingbird shows this happening over and over again. All you have to do is look for it.
One of the principal aims of To Kill a Mockingbird is to subject the narrator to a series of
When Scout complains about her teacher, Atticus tells her that “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. 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” (Lee 33). In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch teaches his daughter moral values as he prepares to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been charged with raping a white woman. Harper Lee was influenced by court cases that were based on the racial prejudice of blacks. One of those cases was the Scottsboro Trial of 1931, in which nine African American males were falsely accused of raping two white women while on a train to Memphis. The trial began on April 6, 1931, and lasted just three days. Eight of the nine boys were found guilty and sentenced to death. Because the Scottsboro Boys’ first trial was appealed, it was sent to the Alabama Supreme Court, and then sent to the United States Supreme Court. The Court ordered new trials because the Scottsboro defendants had not had adequate legal representation. (Gerdes 250). The case against one of the boys, Haywood Patterson, began in Decatur, Alabama, on March 27 with Judge James Horton presiding. During this trial one of the white girls, Ruby Bates, said they were not raped while two physicians concluded that the girls were not raped either. On April 9, 1933, the first defendant, Haywood Patterson, was sentenced to execution, but Judge Horton ordered a new trial because the evidence did not warrant conviction. Even though the novel is fictional and the court case is real, the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Scottsboro Boys trial were similar be...
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.
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.
Harper Lee was the youngest daughter of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee. She was very reserved about her personal life growing up. Most information about her comes from people that knew her. People theorize that her life was a model for this book. Also Scout is Harper Lee. There are also fables about the novel. One myth is that Harper didn’t write the book at all, but Truman Capote did. This is clearly not true.
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.
Nelle Harper Lee, the famous author of the worldwide bestseller To Kill a Mockingbird, was born April 28th, 1926, to Amasa Coleman (a lawyer) and Frances Lee. At the time, the family lived in Monroeville, Alabama. Harper’s family was somewhat wealthy, and they lived in upper middle class society most of their lives. Harper’s birth name, Nelle, was her grandmother’s spelled backwards (Ellen). However, in her publications, she took her middle name, Harper, to avoid being known as “Nellie”. But what numerous people have never heard - and many would be shocked to know - is that one windy, rainy night, Harper threw all her unpublished manuscripts of To Kill a Mockingbird out the window! Fortunately, she soon realized what she had done, and called over her editor, Tay Hohoff, to assist her. Hohoff sent her out in the snow and slush to retrieve her pages, which luckily had not fallen far away. But one would wonder: what would have happened if she had done the same on a slightly windier night?
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee's only novel, is a fictional story of racial oppression, set in Maycomb, A.L. in 1925 to 1935, loosely based on the events of the Scottsboro trials. Unlike the story however, the racial discrimination and oppression in the novel very accurately portrays what it was like in the 1920's and 1930's in the south. Tom Robinson, the black man accused of raping a poor low class white girl of 19, never stood a chance of getting a fair trial. This can be supported by giving examples of racially discriminatory and oppressive events that actually took place in the south during the time period in which the novel is based. In addition to actual historical events, events and examples from the book that clearly illustrate the overpoweringly high levels of prejudice that were intertwined in the everyday thinking of the majority of the characters in the book supports the fact that Tom Robinson never stood a chance of getting a fair trial.
In a desperate attempt to save his client, Tom Robinson, from death, Atticus Finch boldly declares, “To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. This case is as simple as black and white” (Lee 271). The gross amounts of lurid racial inequality in the early 20th century South is unfathomable to the everyday modern person. African-Americans received absolutely no equality anywhere, especially not in American court rooms. After reading accounts of the trials of nine young men accused of raping two white women, novelist Harper Lee took up her pen and wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, a blistering exposition of tragic inequalities suffered by African Americans told from the point of view of a young girl. Though there are a few trivial differences between the events of the Scottsboro trials and the trial of Tom Robinson portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird, such as the accusers’ attitudes towards attention, the two cases share a superabundance of similarities. Among these are the preservation of idealist views regarding southern womanhood and excessive brutality utilized by police.
Scout Finch is the narrator in Lee’s work To Kill A Mockingbird, and the two share many similarities in real life. They both grew up in the 1930 in Alabama towns. Lee’s father was Amasa Lee “attorney who served in the state legislature in Alabama” (Johnson). Atticus Finch who is Scout’s father was also an attorney and served on the state legislature. They both had an older brother and a young neighbor playmate. Lee’s was Truman Capote and Scouts was Dill.