Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird, both as a novel and as a film, shows how time can change the way society views the importance of certain issues, such as racism. Because it was written during the civil rights movement, many people protested against it for conveying issues of prejudice between the north and the south. However, after time, the novel gradually became accepted. It is now a world-renowned classic, and it has won the Pulitzer Prize, as well as having made its way to the big screen. The author, Harper Lee, sets the story in a small town in Alabama. The narrator is a 9-year-old tomboy, whose father was a widowed lawyer. Herbert Mitgang wrote in the New York Times on July 13, 1960:

The author eases the reader into the life of the town with warmth and good humor. The reader builds what the children call a Negro ?snowman;? rolls crazily down the street in a somersaulting old tire; sits in a consolidated classroom in a hilarious scene where the backcountry kids unhinge a teacher from an alien ?north? county of Alabama. The children?s phrases, the slang of Southern poor white and Negro, and the language of the more educated people have a regional charm.

Mitgang tells us that the novel is about the life of two children who live in a small town, where they deal with racism in society. Prejudice surrounds their childhood, and it lurks with them while they are playing, and even while they are in the classroom. Mitgang tells us that on top of all this, racism is conveyed in the children?s language.

Writer Jane Kansas created a website dedicated to To Kill a Mockingbird. She covers areas such as the novel, the film, events, reviews, interviews, and a biography of Harper Lee. According to ...

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Neary, Lynn. Talk of the Nation. NPR . Oct. 2002. 01 Nov. 2005.

< http://www.npr.org/programs/totn/features/2002/oct/books/>.

Tubelle, Larry. Rev. of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Variety 100 12 Dec. 1962.

4 Nov. 2005 .

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< http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/to_kill_a_mockingbird/?sortby=date&critic=columns>.