1. To Kill a Mockingbird
By Harper Lee

2. SETTING OF THE NOVEL Harper Lee is from Monroeville, Alabama
Fictional setting in novel is Maycomb, Alabama
- 1930’s
Great Depression
Prejudice & legal segregation
Ignorance

3. 1930’s - Great Depression began when the stock market crashed in October, 1929
Businesses failed, factories closed
People were out of work
Even people with money suffered because nothing was being produced for sale.
Poor people lost their homes, were forced to “live off the land.”

4. Symbolized through the character of Bob Ewell, this book shows how racial prejudice was alive & well even though slavery had ended in 1864.

5. Racial separation (segregation)

6. Gender Bias (Prejudice)
Women were considered “weak”
Women were generally not educated for occupations outside the home
In wealthy families, women were expected to oversee the servants and entertain guests
Men not considered capable of nurturing children

7. Legal Issues of the 1930’s which impact the story
Women given the vote in 1920
Juries were MALE and WHITE
“Fair trial” did not include acceptance of a black man’s word against a white man’s

8. Race Gender Rich/Poor (Socio-Economic) Age Religion
Prejudice in the novel
Race
Gender
Rich/Poor (Socio-Economic)
Age
Religion

9. Characters
Atticus Finch - an attorney whose wife has died, leaving him to raise their two children:
-Jem – 10-year-old boy
-Scout – (Jean Louise), 6-year-old girl
Tom Robinson – a black man accused of raping white girl; he is defended at trial by Atticus

10. Point of View First person Story is told by Scout, a 10-year-old girl
Most think that Scout represents the author, Harper Lee, as a little girl although the story is not strictly autobiographical

11. Reading the Novel Setting is all important –be aware of the
“where” and “when” as you begin
Point of View – the novel is shaped by the voice of a young girl who sees the story from a position of naïve acceptance
“Goodness vs. Ignorance (Evil)” is an important theme
Language: There are some words used in this novel that are unacceptable. They are put there to reflect the ignorance and lack of education of the characters who say these words.

12. Harper Lee April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016

13. [A writer] should write about what he or she knows and write truthfully. —Harper Lee

14. Harper Lee has followed her own advice in writing about what she knows.
In fact, critics have noted many parallels between the novel and Lee’s early life.
Maycomb, the setting for the novel, bears a striking resemblance to the small town of Monroeville, Alabama, where Lee grew up in the1930s.

15. Like Scout, the narrator of the novel, Lee’s family has deep roots in Alabama.
Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was a descendant of General Robert E. Lee.
A lawyer and state legislator, Lee’s father likely served as the model for Atticus Finch, Scout’s father in the novel.

16. In 1949, however, she withdrew and moved to New York City with the goal of becoming a writer.
While working at other jobs, Lee submitted stories and essays to publishers.
All were rejected.
An agent, however, took an interest in one of her short stories and suggested she expand it into a novel.

17. By 1957 she had finished a draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

18. A publisher to whom she sent the novel saw its potential but thought it needed reworking.
With her editor, Lee spent two and a half more years revising the manuscript.

19. By 1960 the novel was published.
In a 1961 interview with Newsweek magazine, Lee commented:
Writing is the hardest thing in the world,. . . but writing is the only thing that has made me completely happy.

20. To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate and widespread success.
Within a year, the novel sold half a million copies and received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

21. Within two years, it was turned into a highly acclaimed film.

22. Summing up the novel’s enduring impact in a 1974 review, R. A
Summing up the novel’s enduring impact in a 1974 review, R. A. Dave called To Kill a Mockingbird
. . . a movingly human drama of the jostling worlds—of children and adults, of innocence and experience, of kindness and cruelty, of love and hatred, of humor and pathos, and above all of appearance and reality—all taking the reader to the root of human behavior.

23. For almost four decades, Harper Lee declined to comment on her popular novel To Kill a Mockingbird, preferring instead to let the novel speak for itself.