Tolog Review: To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
reviewed by Hannah Sobota

Pulitzer Prize winner, Harper Lee, has written a timeless classic about life in Maycomb Alabama, 1933. Harper Lee, an Alabama Native, won three other awards on top of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, including,Presidential Medal of Freedom, Goodreads Choice Awards Best Fiction, and Quill Award for Audiobook. Until a year ago, Harper Lee had published only one work To Kill A Mockingbird; her last published work was Go Set a Watchman.The title To Kill A Mockingbird is symbolic in its meaning. It was widely believed that killing a mockingbird was sinful. The symbolism of killing an innocent songbird contrasted with the accusations against innocent people. The title addresses the social issues that are discussed in this novel. This compelling book is appropriate from ages twelve and above. The author relies on no preface prviede by either herself or a guest author, but immediately jumps into her first story on the first page of her novel.

Set in the 1930’s in Maycomb Alabama, life in the Finch household was anything but dull. Scout’s mother has passed away, and Atticus Finch, an attorney, is raising two children alone. Scout and Jem, Atticus’s children, are best friends with Dill. When Atticus is chosen to defend a suspect in a case of sexual assault with significant racial complications, the three children become very interested. After they have the opportunity to understand the case from a different perspective than many of the other towns people, they begin to see life in a very different way. Atticus Finch describes the racial perspective held by many of the people of their town, “The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption-the evil assumption- that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber.” (Lee 273). However, what the three children came to understand that summer, justice was different for white people than it was for black people in their town: “If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man,’ said Atticus. ‘So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s jury, but you saw something come between them and reason. You saw the same thing that night in front of the jail. When that crew went away, they didn’t go as reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads-they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.’ ‘Doesn’t that make it right,’ said Jem stolidy. He beat his fist softly on his knee. ‘You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that -you can’t.” (Lee 295)