To Kill A Mockingbird Themes

Carleen Phillips

Ms. Case

American Literature

5/31/2018 Period 01

Harper Lee In the Novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee expresses different themes throughout the book. Some of the themes she has included in the book are prejudice, courage, morality, walking in another man’s shoes, growing up, and racism. These themes are important because it teaches the reader as well as entertain them. Courage plays a big role in this novel because it is shown a lot throughout the story. Harper Lee was the youngest of four children. In her years growing up she was a “tomboy”. She lived in a small town with her parents and siblings. “ Her father was a lawyer...her mother suffered from mental illness, rarely leaving the house…”( “ Background and early

She struggled for several years working as a ticket agent. While in the city she reunited with Capote. She also befriended Broadway composer Michael Brown and his wife Joy.“ In 1956, the Browns gave Lee an impressive Christmas present- to support her for a year so that she could write full time. She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft. The Browns also helped her find an agent, Maurice Crain. He in turn, was able to get publisher J.B Lippincott Company interested in her work. Working with editor Tay Hohoff, Lee worked on a manuscript set in a small Alabama town, which eventually became her novel To Kill a Mockingbird.” ( “Background and early

“The novel has remained a steadfast choice by school districts over the decades as the themes it touches, from racism to social injustice, have proven to be timeless elements of American history” (“Harper Lee: The Impact of To Kill a Mockingbird”) It discusses the themes of racism and prejudice and growing up. The book follows a young Scout and her brother and father. Her father is a lawyer who is trying to help a black man who was falsely accused of raping a white woman. In the book Atticus plays the role as the father figure and teacher. In the book he states that,” … I do my best to love everybody… I’m hard put, sometimes- baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you…” (Lee pg 108) “Each character represents a type of struggle and each, in their own way, overcome that struggle. Atticus struggles with his own culture heritage, while representing a black man most want to lynch. Scout and Jem struggle with their own place in childhood, both seeing the people around them in a different light, their naivety becoming their saving grace. The neighbors struggle with age, alcoholism and racism and, in their own way, either succeed or stay stagnant.” (The importance of To kill a mockingbird by Steve Krage) “Some of those disturbances could lie in the way the book was constructed. To Kill a Mockingbird emerged from a series of