- The Good: Enduring American fiction about how racism is bad
- The Bad: Simplistic, even romanticized
- The Literary: Pulitzer Prize winning classic
Jean Louise “Scout” Finch and her older brother Jem grow up with their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer, and their black cook Calpurnia, in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. Together with their friend Dill, they spend their summers feeding each other terrifying rumors about their reclusive neighbor Arthur “Boo” Radley. A couple years later, their father is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white woman.
To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature. In it, an innocent young girl learns about the world in an idyllic small town in the south. But she grows up fast when she’s forced to understand and face the consequences of racism, including nearly the entire town turning on her family because her father defends a clearly innocent black man.
Lee is an incredible storyteller who paints a vivid picture of Maycomb. As a reader, you feel like you’re there with Scout and easily see the world from a child’s perspective—but with an adult’s hindsight. Lee does this masterfully through Scout’s day-to-day, from being misunderstood in school, to performing made-up stories with Jem and Dill, to defending her tomboyish ways against her prim aunt. Adults don’t always act in ways that make sense to Scout, because as a child she doesn’t have the ability to see the hidden motivations or an awareness of long unquestioned traditions.
In the first part of the novel, Scout is growing up, often confused, often scared, often saying insightful things that make some adults laugh but others gasp. But when the main plot kicks in, and her father takes up the charge of defending Tom Robinson, Scout learns what it’s like to be shunned and called names by her classmates, as well as other adults. The situation is difficult enough for her father, who is doing something he believes is right, but it’s unfair to his children, and he tell them he hopes that one day they’ll look back on this time with some compassion for him.
This is a coming of age story, and I’d argue it has some southern gothic elements as well, especially the near-supernatural qualities of Boo Radley and his house at the beginning. Once the racism story comes in swinging, the tone becomes significantly more realistic, addressing themes such as alcoholism, incest, rape, and murder. Through it all, Scout’s father Atticus, remains the constant moral compass of the book, and her reverence for him and his authority never wavers. In fact, he’s a perfect character, never at fault, around whom all other characters in the story revolve.
The novel’s legacy is primarily concerned with race relations. Released in 1960, five years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, and four years after the riots following the admittance of two black students at University of Alabama, this novel takes a strong stance during a conflict-ridden era of social change in the American south. Many consider it to have been a pivotal point in the Civil Rights Movement, condemning racism but not racists, and allowing white people to rise above the systems in which they were raised.
Unfortunately, I see the limitations of the discussions of race, especially with modern eyes. The book is written by a white woman about white people and for white people. The only two black people in the novel who have any voice are Tom Robinson, a defenseless, stupid man who relies on the white savior Atticus. Calpurnia, Scout’s nurse, is better developed but has the aura of an Uncle Tom about her. James Baldwin describes the situation best when he says that any story about race shouldn’t make you feel sentimental. We demoralize any people’s story if we don’t understand and put on full display the real complexities.
That being said, I see the enduring popularity of To Kill a Mockingbird in its fundamental lessons of human dignity and respect for others. However, I’ll soon read If Beale Street Could Talk another book about a Black man who is falsely accused of raping a woman, this one written by a black man.