To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide Author Biography 2
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To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide by Course Hero Maycomb. Her innocence adds texture and poignancy to the What's Inside story. Although she doesn't fully understand what's going on around her, she gives readers enough information to interpret themselves. j Book Basics ................................................................................................. 1 TENSE d In Context ..................................................................................................... 1 To Kill a Mockingbird is told primarily in the past tense. a Author Biography ..................................................................................... 2 ABOUT THE TITLE To Kill a Mockingbird is a reference to one of the novel's h Characters ................................................................................................... 2 primary symbols: the mockingbird, a symbol of innocence. k Plot Summary ............................................................................................. 7 c Chapter Summaries .............................................................................. 12 d In Context g Quotes ........................................................................................................ 29 l Symbols ...................................................................................................... 31 Published in 1960, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate success, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in m Themes ....................................................................................................... 31 1961. The novel was turned into a popular motion picture in 1962. At the Academy Awards actor Gregory Peck won an e Suggested Reading .............................................................................. 32 Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch. This tale of racism and social injustice is especially poignant because of its six-year-old narrator, Scout Finch, who shares j Book Basics the events through her innocent but observant eyes. What has solidified the novel as one of the most influential in AUTHOR American literature is its treatment of race relations, as seen in Harper Lee Tom Robinson's rape case. The novel's other subplot focuses YEAR PUBLISHED on prejudice against the town's reclusive resident Boo Radley. 1960 These two subplots converge to convey powerful themes of tolerance and justice. GENRE Drama, Fiction The novel and movie were released during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement. The first sit-in protest against PERSPECTIVE AND NARRATOR segregation occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina, in To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated in first-person point of view February 1960. Three years after that lunch counter sit-in, from the perspective of Scout Finch. At the opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. penned his famous "Letter from novel Scout is six years old and living in Great Depression–era Birmingham Jail," a defense of nonviolent civil disobedience. A Alabama. Scout gives the unique perspective of a child as she few months later he led the March on Washington and talks about the racial and social relations in her town of To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide Author Biography 2 delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. That a book and a film Lee earned her own literary achievement in 1960 with the could resonate with the country amid such controversy publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, for which she won the suggested that the movement toward equality, as Atticus said, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Despite the critical and might be "the shadow of a beginning." commercial success, Lee didn't publish any more books until 2015. Her second novel, Go Set a Watchman, features many of To Kill a Mockingbird remains a thought-provoking and timely the same characters as To Kill a Mockingbird, although it is set tale of cultural struggle as the United States continues to work 20 years after that novel's events. Although Go Set a toward equality on all fronts. Watchman was initially publicized as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, the book is actually a first draft of Lee's prize- winning novel. When Go Set a Watchman was rejected for a Author Biography publication in 1957, Lee's editor suggested she revise the story to focus on the character of Scout. Two years later To Kill a Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Mockingbird was accepted for publication. Alabama, the same state in which To Kill a Mockingbird is set. Lee's death at age 89 on February 19, 2016, prompted a She was the youngest of four children born to Amasa Coleman national outpouring of grief and admiration for the author and Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. her monumental work. Certain aspects of Lee's upbringing seem to have planted the seeds for the characters and story found in the novel. Much like Scout, Lee was a professed tomboy whose h Characters father—thought to be the inspiration of Atticus Finch—was also a lawyer and legislator who had once defended two black men accused of murdering a white man. As a child she often sat in on court proceedings in which her father practiced. Scout It's often speculated that Lee's childhood friend and next-door Jean Louise Finch is the daughter of widowed lawyer Atticus neighbor, Truman Streckfus Persons—who would grow up to Finch. Known affectionately by her nickname, Scout is nearly be famed author Truman Capote—was the inspiration for Dill six years old as the story begins. A tomboy through and (Charles Baker Harris). through, Scout is eager, inquisitive, and observant. Her father teaches her to read at an early age, so she has the ability to Lee finished high school and enrolled in Huntingdon College in soak up information wherever she finds it. She is mature and 1944. There she occasionally wrote articles for the college wise far beyond her years, which doesn't always sit well with newspaper. The following year she transferred to law school at the adult citizens of Maycomb. Even at six Scout shows herself the University of Alabama, inspired by her father's legal career. to be open-minded and openhearted. She sees people as She also continued her interest in writing, contributing to the individuals and does not prejudge them according to the color university's student magazine and eventually becoming its of their skin. Scout goes into situations expecting as much editor. The summer before her senior year, she studied as an goodwill as she brings, and has difficulty coping with deceit. By exchange student at the University of Oxford in England. There the book's end when she is nine, she learns to deal with the she began to formulate a plan for the future: her career would fact that the world is not as kind or honorable as she grew up be in writing, not the law. believing. In 1949 after a final semester at the University of Alabama, she moved to New York City to pursue a literary career. There she fell in again with her childhood friend, Truman Capote. To Jem support herself while writing, she served as Capote's research assistant, traveling with him to Holcomb, Kansas, where they Jeremy Atticus Finch (Jem) is Scout's older brother, 10 years worked on Capote's nonfiction narrative In Cold Blood. old at the novel's beginning. He is as wildly imaginative and curious as Scout, especially when it comes to the reclusive Copyright © 2018 Course Hero, Inc. To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide Characters 3 Boo Radley, but he also has the capacity to be thoughtful and over the summer. He lives three doors down from the Finches considerate. Jem is more introspective than other boys his age, in a foreboding house, where he hasn't been seen for years. perhaps because he misses his mother (who died three to four According to local lore Boo's father kept him imprisoned in the years before the events of the book). Jem's thoughtfulness is house after Boo got into legal troubles as a teenager. The characterized by a deliberate and deep ability to think. At times children's fear and prejudice against Boo runs parallel with the we see the youthful Jem at war with the Jem who is growing town's prejudice against Tom Robinson, the black man up; this dichotomy, or split personality, makes his character all accused of raping a white woman. But the real Boo is quite a the more real. different person than the town believes. By the end of the novel the children have a more nuanced and sympathetic opinion of the former object of their curiosity and fear. Atticus Atticus Finch is a lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama, and the Dill widowed father of Jem and Scout. Atticus is well-respected personally and professionally. He is an honest man with an Charles Baker Harris, or Dill, is the six-year-old nephew of open heart, a quick and fair mind, and a gentle disposition. At Rachel Haverford, the Finches' next-door neighbor. Jem and the same time Atticus is strong and focused in everything he Scout meet him at the beginning of the novel when he comes does. His levelheadedness and legal training give him a solid to stay for the summer. Dill becomes a good friend to both Jem backbone and strength of conviction, particularly during Tom's and Scout, and Atticus and Calpurnia regard him as one of racially fueled rape case. Neighbor Miss Maudie tells Jem and their own. Dill, who is being shuttled among relatives after his Scout that Maycomb citizens are paying a great compliment to mother remarries, protects himself with a vivid imagination. their father by placing faith in him to do the right thing. When he hears the story of Boo Radley, he entices Jem and Throughout the novel Atticus shows himself capable of living Scout to help him lure the reclusive Boo from his house. up to that trust. Bob Ewell Calpurnia Bob Ewell is the father of Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson's Calpurnia has been the Finch family cook since Jem was born. accuser. He is jobless, racist, and tends to drink away the relief When Atticus's wife died, she became a mother figure of sorts checks that are meant to feed his many children.