You may have read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. It's worth a reread.
Along
with being a poignant tale of race relations in the Deep South in the
pre–civil rights era, the book is a classic story about the
confusion and joys of growing up, a young girl's discomfort with the
constraints of femininity, a parent's heroism, and the mythology
surrounding a misfit who turns out to be heroic himself. It's all told
in utterly beguiling and insightful voice of Jean Louise (aka "Scout")
Finch, who is five when the action begins and nine when it concludes.
Scout and her brother Jem are being brought up by their widowed father,
Atticus Finch, a lawyer, state representative, and descendant of a long
line of Finches in Maycomb County, Alabama. Aided by the family's
housekeeper, Calpurnia, Atticus is doing the best he can as a
50-year-old single parent. His children adore him but think him
different from other fathers — too old to toss around a ball,
not
a drinker or a smoker or a poker player. Atticus also thinks
differently from most of Maycomb, and Scout and Jem gradually
find out how much courage that can require.
Dominating the early chapters of the book are the fascination of Scout,
Jem, and their friend Dill with Arthur "Boo" Radley, a neighbor whose
family has kept him indoors for almost two decades after a run-in with
the law. The children's imaginations attribute all manner of
malevolence to Boo until a mystery giver starts leaving them presents
in a hollow of a tree. The possibility of Boo's being the benefactor
makes them even more curious.
Boo recedes into the background when Atticus's defense of a black man
accused of raping a white woman takes center stage. Although the
outcome of the trial is not surprising — this is the South in
1935, after all — the fallout for the Finch family (as well
as
the family of the accused) makes for gripping reading. When things are
supposedly getting back to normal, repercussions from the case erupt in
a suspenseful climax in which Boo comes out from hiding to be a savior.
To Kill a Mockingbird
is so
wonderfully told, its tone is so warm, its plot so powerful, its
characters so original, its balance of seriousness and humor so
perfect, that one would wish to read more from Harper Lee.
Unfortunately, this novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize, was her only
one.
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