Personal Monologue In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

A personal monologue is when an actor speaks alone and says a personal story that relates to the scene that is about to happen. The director’s decision to add in the actor’s personal monologues was important because it required the audience to connect the topics of the monologues to the play. It also required the audience to connect the play to real life experiences and to match the actor’s personality to the characters.
Firstly, in To KIll a Mockingbird, The personal monologues of the actors were related to specific scenes in the play. For example, before the scene where the neighbors were telling Scout about the Radley family, Rachael Warren, who was playing Miss Maudie “broke character” and told the audience her personal story. Her personal story was about how her son has down syndrome and about how people looked at him differently and judged him without trying to get to know him. Rachael Warren’s story related to the scene that followed after her personal monologue because in the scene after the monologue, Scout’s neighbors told Scout false information about the Radley family, which made Scout view the Radleys as her creepy, mysterious,

and spooky neighbors without trying to get to know them first. Both stories relate because they both have a victim who is getting judged.
Secondly, the personal monologues were intentionally added throughout the play.

Adding the personal monologues was going to give the audience not only a chance to connect the play to the book but also a chance to connect the book to real life challenges that people face. One actor named Alexis Green, who played Mayella Ewell, told the audience a story about how she was a virgin dating someone at age 20 and that the guy she was dating broke up with her because he “did not want to take her virginity” from her. Green told the audience that she felt heartbroken but that then she realized “...I’ve never really offered it to you,..” Alexis Green’s monologue related to Mayella Ewell accusing Tom Robinson of rape because Tom Robinson was made as a sexual being just like Alexis Green so people believed that he did infact rape

Mayella.
Lastly, the personal monologues helped the audience match the actor’s and the character’s personalities. For example, David Samuel who plays Tom Robinson told the audience his personal monologue about attending his brother’s basketball game. His brother’s team was all black while the other team was all white. When David Samuel went to his brother’s game, he saw that the spectators and that the referees viewed his brother differently because of his skin color. This shows that David Samuel’s personality matches Tom Robinson’s because Tom Robinson was a black man who was getting accused of rape by a white woman. If Tom Robinson and David Samuel’s brother were both white, then the white people would not have been against Tom and David.
In conclusion, personal monologues are important to the audience to personally connect with judgment, being a sexual being, and racism. When I viewed the play in March of 2016, I connected most to Fred Sullivan, who played Boo Radley. Fred Sullivan’s monologue was about how he was peer pressured to kill a rat and he felt horrible about it. Sullivan’s monologue helped me think about how one day I was pressured to laugh at a boy when he spilled his orange juice all over his clothes because I felt awful afterwards and connect it to how Mayella Ewell felt dreadful after she was pressured to accuse Tom Robinson.