To Kill a Mockingbird An Introduction One of
To Kill a Mockingbird: An Introduction
One of the most influential novels in American history. • Rated, after the Bible, as one book “most often cited as making a difference” in people’s lives • Considered the one book “every adult should read before they die” by British librarians • Voted the “Best Novel of the 20 th century” by readers of the Library Journal • Ranked fifth on the Modern Library’s Reader’s List of the 100 Best Novels in the English language since 1900
Questions to ask yourself while reading To Kill a Mockingbird: • What am I learning – to see with “other eyes, – to imagine with other imaginations, and – to feel with other hearts”? • What is this book making me think about?
The Author • Nelle Harper Lee, 34 yearold woman • Born (1926) and raised in Monroeville, AL • Daughter of Amasa Lee, a small-town lawyer and widower • Law school drop out, 1949 • Childhood friend of author Truman Capote
The Setting • Maycomb, Alabama, a tiny (fictional) town, much like the real town of Monroeville.
small-town Alabama, 1930 s
Courthouse Monroeville, Alabama
An Alabama Sharecropper’s Home, 1936
African American church in Alabama in the 1930 s
The Setting • Early 1930’s, during the Great Depression
The Scottsboro Boys 1931 -1937 Nine African American teenagers falsely accused of rape. The investigations and trials lasted 6 years
A white lawyer, Sam Leibowitz, defended the accused boys.
The Dust Bowl in Oklahoma created problems. . . and extreme poverty in every state in America.
Franklin D. Roosevelt succeeded Herbert Hoover as President
King Kong, the hit movie of 1933
Lou Gerhig and Babe Ruth were the most famous baseball players in America
America in the 1950 s while Harper Lee was writing To Kill a Mockingbird
Southern states opposed school integration
May 1954: Supreme Court Orders School Integration
August 1955: A 14 year-old Chicago boy, Emmett Till, is murdered in Mississippi
Till’s killers are tried for murder and are declared “not guilty” by an all-white jury.
The Characters • Narrator: Scout Finch, six-year-old girl • Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, widower, & small-town lawyer • Jem Finch, Scout’s older brother • Dill Harris, strange, pint-sized summer neighbor • ‘Boo’ Radley, mysterious & reclusive neighbor • Tom Robinson, African American man accused of rape • Bob Ewell, poor red-neck racist
Atticus teaches Scout an important lesson
The Story § § Set in small-town Alabama in the 1930 s Spans three years Narrated by Scout 3 children learn about life by witnessing the complicated problems facing adults in their small Alabama town.
Boo Radley’s house
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s garden’s, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hears out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. ” ~Miss Maudie, TKAM, page 94
Who will turn out to be the “mockingbirds” in this story?
Who will Scout---and you---learn. . . to see differently?
Power. Point presentation prepared by Chris Crowe, Professor of English, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
- Slides: 29