“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

Imagine a little town in American South. A town, which is carefully covered from the bright sunlight by the branches of ancient oaks, a town where every garden is decorated with azaleas, camellias and roses, where all people know each other and secrets are impossible to keep for more than two days. All the inhabitants here are very different, with unique fancies and skeletons in the cupboards, they have their own social ladder as well as social divisions but the life seems to go on quietly and peacefully. And it looks like nothing important can happen in this place… but precisely here, in Maycomb, Alabama, Harper Lee set her acclaimed novel.


Adult world in the eyes of a child

“To Kill a Mockingbird” is a little trip to the land of childhood. Of a childhood sunny and warm, with lemonade on a hot day, with secrets behind the high fence of the Radley’s place, with Miss Maudie’s colourful garden and Mrs. Dubose’s endless moralizing.

The novel is narrated by Jean Louise Finch (or just Scout for short), a little daughter of a local lawyer Atticus Finch. Together with her brother Jim, Scout spends several unforgettable summer holidays, full of happy and sad, kind and horrifying events.

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill”.

Dill is a nephew of the Finches’ neighbour, Mrs. Rachel, and it was his idea to draw Boo Radley out of the house that started the whole story. And how could they not find out why Mr. Arthur Radley hasn’t left his house for so many years? With neighbours gossiping and telling scary stories about this place, the children just couldn’t let such an adventure pass by.

The children play, learn and grow up, discovering a completely new world around them. Jim’s greatest desire is to become an adult as soon as possible, Scout asks tons of questions and fights with local boys while Dill keeps inventing new exciting adventures.

Meanwhile the life of adults takes its own path, and Atticus Finch is getting ready to the trial of his life – a trial in which a white woman Mayella Ewell accuses a black man Tom Robinson of rape. This trial will turn upside down the whole Maycomb, and, of course, it can’t be concealed from the children, who are eager to know everything about the world. Scout has an opinion of her own about all these events, for her the people are divided, but not into black and white, but into kind and evil. But in the world of adults everything is much more complicated…

What is Tom Robinson’s fault?

Social equality is a queer thing. It can easily be introduced on paper, indeed, why not just pass a law which says that all people are equal? It seems that if something is dictated by the Law itself, it is a universal truth and therefore from now on no one shall feel discriminated or outcast. But tell me honestly, when and where has anyone seen a society in which all people would be truly equal? In all times and places all societies were divided into rich and poor, elite and lower class, natives and immigrants.

In Maycomb County the society was white and coloured. And Tom Robinson was unlucky enough to be born with the “wrong” skin colour. I call him unlucky for should he be white, his case would never have been brought to the court. In reality there were no evidence against him but for the words of Mayella Ewell and her father. Atticus’s speech in defence of Tom is one of the best monologues in fiction and a great example of the art of eloquence, but even with all his persuasiveness taken into consideration, social prejudice turns out to be stronger.

“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash”, - 

Atticus tells his children and they are much more apt to understand that than any adult.

So for whose sins must Tom atone? For his own? Or rather for the sins of the Ewells? And if it is so, why was he and not the Ewells brought to the court? And finally, can skin colour be anyone’s guilt? Those are the questions that Harper Lee want her reader to consider.

Upbringing at home and at school

Of course, writing about children the author can’t pass by the issue of upbringing.

Always honest and fair, Atticus represents the image of an ideal father, the model of how you should give your children an example to follow. He doesn’t do anything special and you may even accuse him of spending not enough time with his children, but the time they do spend together is priceless for his son and daughter. Every word of Atticus is a valuable lesson, which Jim and Scout will remember till the end of their lives. But his actions are worth even more.

“He is a real gentlemen”, - Jim keeps repeating, and not in vain. Atticus is always reserved, friendly, equally respectful to all the people surrounding him. He doesn’t like boasting his talents (although, believe me, he has plenty) and he teaches his children to tell the truth in all occasions, even though it might be not the most pleasant thing in the world.

However, except not only father gives Scout and Jim education, soon they get acquainted with quite different opinions at school. And here it seems to be not so cheerful. From the very first day at school, Scout’s eye starts catching little and big faults of Maycomb education. Let’s take, for instance, her teacher’s statement that Atticus shouldn’t have taught his children to read before they went to school for, obviously, he did that “not in the proper way”. But what can be wrong about a child aged four who is eager to learn and thinks that books are the greatest treasure on the planet? From here arises a question: can it happen that what Atticus taught the children on his own example and with his own efforts will turn out to be more important than anything from the acclaimed and developed by the greatest scientists Dewey Decimal System?

It is sad, but very often teaches forget that the main aim of school education is not to fill the children’s heads with tons of information but to discover their personal abilities and talents, to teach them to be kind, honest and fair, to teach them to seek for knowledge and not get it ready and processes, to have an opinion of their own and not imposed by someone. That is, to teach each of them o be a Person with that notorious capital letter.

So where is the mockingbird?

“Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird”.

This little grey bird becomes the symbol of innocence and natural kindness in this novel. Mockingbird is any person which has no evil intentions, which might have weaknesses and drawbacks, might be strange and unlike anyone else, but the main thing is that this person is kind to everyone around.

Mockingbird is not only Tom Robinson, who was severely punished for his innocence and kindness to a white woman, but also Boo Radley who, notwithstanding his nickname was nicer than most of other characters in the novel.

Atticus is a kind of a mockingbird himself, for he agreed to defend Tom Robinson getting nothing in return, and knowing that society would turn against him, that a case where “a humble Negro … has had to put his word against two white people's”, was lost before it began. But Atticus is used to be honest with everyone and first of all with himself, he would simply not be able to sleep peacefully at night if he hadn’t tried to do anything, try to change the world for the best and make people to be people.

There are lots of mockingbirds around us, and they are so different from what we are used to, so people, being afraid of everything strange and confusing, shoot them mercilessly, without really knowing why they do it.

But remember:

“Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird”.