To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

Context of the novel  To Kill a Mockingbird is based on true events from Harper Lee’s childhood in Monroeville, Alabama. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, and the nation was trying to recover from the Great Depression. People felt what little livelihoods they had threatened, and they were edgy.  When the author was five years old, five young black men in a nearby town were charged with rape and sentenced to lengthy prison terms despite unreliable evidence. Many Americans saw the convictions as bogus and motivated only by racism.  To Kill a Mockingbird was written in the late 1950s and published in It won the Pulitzer Prize in  At the time TKAMB was published, John F. Kennedy had just been elected President. Only three years later, Martin Luther King would stage his famous non- violent protests in Birmingham, Alabama and then march on the capital to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Setting  TIME: 1930s  PLACE: Maycomb Country, Alabama  CIRCUMSTANCE: a tight-knit but very homogeneous (and narrow-minded) town feels their power threatened by a black man whom they falsely accuse of rape and a white man whom they almost unfairly accuse of murder

Characters  Atticus  Jem  Scout  Dill (Charles Baker Harris)  Boo Radley  Miss Alexandra  Miss Maudie  Miss Stephanie  Tom Robinson  Mayella Ewell  Sheriff Heck Tate  Judge Taylor

Major Novelistic Content  This novel explores the themes of:  Point of View (see: Scout hears Atticus’s advice; Scout stands on the Radley porch in Chapter 31 and sees things from Boo’s POV)  Appearance vs Truth (see: looks as though Tom Robinson is the victimizer when really he is the victim; looks as though Mrs. Dubose is nasty for the sake of being nasty when really she is overcoming an addiction)  Loss of innocence with maturation (see: Jem—attempting to be like Atticus) AND  Living a good life surrounded by only partially good or even not good people (see: Atticus—serving as a moral scapegoat)

Major Novelistic Style  Written in 1rst person by Scout  Written by a little girl only a few years after the incidents it details  Narrator is bookish (though naïve), feisty (verging on willful and stubborn), and fiercely loyal  Narrator is concerned with events insofar as they impact her relationship with her older brother and her father

Tom Robinson convicted on Mayella Ewell’s testimony

Jem and Scout Finch saved by Boo Radley during Bob Ewell’s retributive attack