1. English 1201 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Class One Notes
Student responsibility: Homework for the next two nights
Questions on Ch. 1-5
Numbers: 3,13,16,19,20
Journal # _____
For Glossary:
Genre: the type of literature; the category or classification.
Fiction: work based on the imagination of the author. Creation of characters and plot are not real-life though they could be probable.
Setting: time, place, circumstances and atmosphere of a piece of literature.
Atmosphere: the feeling that is created by the description of the physical setting.

2. To Kill A Mockingbird as Historical Fiction
  To Kill A Mockingbird is based on a period in the USA which did exist and conditions have been historically noted. The key period, the Depression Era of the 1930’s, occurred after the great stock market crash of After this period people were without jobs and money was very scarce.
  As well as the main setting, some significant events did occur in the life of young Harper Lee and these are alluded to in the text of her novel:
Issues with racism and social stereotyping
Issues concerning the Scottsboro Trials
Issues with the KKK and mob mentality and brutality

3. For Glossary:  Historical fiction: An imaginary novel or story with characters and events that are created from the imagination of the author but the basis of setting (time, place and circumstances) are historic and real.

4. Setting of To Kill A Mockingbird
Details of the exposition
Setting: vivid description of 1930’s depression years, Southern Alabama, USA, (Maycomb). Racism was only one of the prevalent social prejudices.
Novel publication: Racism still a very significant problem. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other activists existed all over the USA.

5. Description of the town:
Description of the town: Find statements which most aptly describe the setting of the novel. Show how they develop the atmosphere of the novel.
“Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb County."
"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square.”
“Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square..."
"People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.“

6. Atmosphere and Diction
Diction which promotes the atmosphere:
“...old town, …a tired old town …streets turned to red slop; … courthouse sagged.”
“….hotter then: … flicked flies in the sweltering shade… “

7. Underline the words/phrases that create it.
Setting quotes:
“Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum…There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County."
Speaker: ___________________________
Page reference: _________________
Atmosphere created: _________________
Underline the words/phrases that create it.

8. Vocabulary To Kill A Mockingbird Chapter 3: dispensation cordially
tranquility
iniquities
Chapter 1:
flinty
assuaged
contemptuous
apothecary
contentious
taciturn
diminutive
repertoire
judiciously
vapid
disapprobation
malevolent
predilection
Chapter 4:
nebulous
auspicious
arbitrated
Chapter 2:
melancholy
condescended
indigenous
Chapter 5:
wallowing
benign
illicitly
tacit
impressionistic
pestilence
entailment
benevolence
vexations
placidly
asinine
edification