1. To Kill a Mockingbird
Introduction Notes

2. Tab Three
Looking at the movie poster and hearing the title of the novel, make your predictions of what you think this novel is going to be about.

3. To Kill a Mockingbird- by Harper Lee

4. To Kill a Mockingbird—Tab 3
Setting–
Maycomb, Alabama
Great Depression Era
Segregation and racial tension
Family during the Great Depression.
Segregation Sign
Alabama

5. The Great Depression Great Depression Impacts: Businesses failed
Factories closed
People were out of work
Even people with money suffered because nothing was being produced for sale.
Poorer people lost their homes

6. Prejudice Racial Prejudice plays a key role in this novel.
Although slavery had ended, old ideas were slow to change.

7. To Kill a Mockingbird Prejudice in the novel includes: Race Gender
Handicaps
Rich/poor
Age
Religion

8. Legal Issues
Legal Issues during the Great Depression which impacted the story:
Women given the right to vote
Juries were MALE and WHITE
“Fair trial” did not include acceptance of a black man’s word against a white man’s word.

9. Characters
Atticus Finch - an attorney whose wife has died, leaving him to raise their two children.
Jem –Atticus’s son, eldest child S
Scout – (Jean Louise), youngest child
Tom Robinson – a black man accused of raping white girl; he is defended at trial by Atticus.

10. Key Ideas The story is told in first person (I)
Story is told in the eyes of Scout
Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is a woman. Scout represents the author when she was a little girl; however, the story is not an autobiography.