To Kill a Mockingbird

The book wasThe book was published in 1960—the time

of the Civil Rights Movement

written by (Nelle) Harper Lee, who based many of the

details on people and places she knew well.

an instant sensation, becoming a best-seller and

winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.https://prezi.com/rh0nb1zsboyf/to-kill-a-mockingbirdthe-civil-rights-movement/

Then…

Now…

Facts about Harper Lee• She was born on April 28, 1926, in the

small town of Monroeville, Alabama. (TKM is set in a own called Maycomb, Alabama)

• She was the youngest of four children and grew up as a tomboy.

• She often stuck up for her best friend (a boy named Truman) who was often teased for his prissy clothes.

• Her father was a lawyer.• Her mother suffered from mental illness,

rarely leaving the house.

The work’s central character, a young girl nicknamed Scout, was not unlike Lee in her youth. In one of the book’s major plotlines, Scout and her brother Jem and their friend Dill explore their fascination with a mysterious and somewhat infamous neighborhood character named Boo Radley.

The novel…Fits into two genres, or categories: First, it is an example of Realistic

fiction (fiction based on actual people, actual events and an actual location)

Second, it is also an example of “a coming of age story”or Bildungsroman; a story about growing up…leaving the innocence of childhood behind.

The novel… Is told in the First Person Point of View Is also a flashback. The adult Scout (Jean Louise Finch) is the

narrator who tells the story of something that happened to her, beginning when she was six years old. Because Scout experienced the events as a child, sometimes she does not fully understand them—she is naïve and innocent.

The novel…• Is set in the 1930s in the American

South (Maycomb, Alabama). • Even though slaves had long since

been freed (in 1863), blacks were still not treated equally by whites. This setting is Pre-Civil Rights.

• Because of the time period in which Because of the time period in which the book was set, we do hear the book was set, we do hear characters using racially offensive characters using racially offensive language.language.

FYI… After the Civil War, many former

slaves had left the rural areas to live in towns and cities. During Reconstruction, blacks and whites often rode together in the same railway cars, ate in the same restaurants, and used the same public facilities but didn't associate socially.

FYIFYI

However, some white southerners thought that the large urban black communities, which provided labor for factories, created a threat. In the city, blacks and whites competed for jobs, and some felt there was a danger of social mixing. The whites felt a need to gain more control over the blacks in the city.

FYI… New laws, called Jim Crow Laws, were

passed, restricting the freedoms of African Americans. In 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. The Court also ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment kept state governments from discriminating against people because of race but did not keep private organizations or individuals from doing so. This allowed railroads, hotels, theaters, and other businesses to legally practice segregation.—separation of the races.

FYI… By 1914 every southern state had passed

laws that created two separate societies: one black, the other white. Blacks and whites could not ride together in the same railroad cars, sit in the same waiting rooms, use the same washrooms, eat in the same restaurants, or sit in the same theaters.

African Americans were denied access to parks, beaches, and picnic areas; they were barred from many hospitals.

The Novel…• Also important to understanding the

setting is the fact that The Great Depression provides the backdrop of poverty that separates many of the characters in this novel.

• Millions of people lost their jobs and many farmers lost their land. Even professionals, like lawyers, struggled financially, because no one could afford to pay them for their services.

•Another factor in the setting is Maycomb's small-town Southern atmosphere -- in which nobody locks their doors at night and the local telephone operator can identify callers solely by their voices -- contributes to the security of Scout's world, at the same time that pervasive forces of racism threaten to unsettle it.

The Novel…

The Novel… In regard to Structure and Plot, the

novel replays three key years in the life of Scout Finch, the young daughter of an Alabama town's principled lawyer.

The Novel…• Scout relates how she and her older

brother Jem learn about fighting prejudice and upholding human dignity through the example of their father, Atticus. He has taken on the legal defense of a black man who has been falsely charged with raping a white woman.

The Novel…• Structurally, To Kill a Mockingbird begins

at the end of the story, then immediately flashes back to the beginning.

• The novel opens with the adult Jean Louise "Scout" Finch writing, "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow." By the time Jem finally gets around to breaking his arm more than 250 pages later most readers will have forgotten they were ever warned.

The Novel… The book has two plots, which inch forward

along parallel tracks, finally coming together near the end.

The first plot revolves around Arthur "Boo" Radley, who lives in a mysterious house down the street from the Finches and is rumored to be some kind of monster. He is a recluse

Scout, Jem, and their next-door neighbor Dill engage in countless pranks, trying to make Boo show himself. Unexpectedly, Boo reciprocates their interest with a series of small gifts, until he ultimately steps off his porch and into their lives when they need him most.

The Novel… Boo is an “urban legend” in

Maycomb

The Novel…• The second story concerns Scout and

Jem's father, the attorney Atticus Finch. The local judge appoints him to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white woman. Atticus suspects he will lose the case, but he faces up to the challenge just the same, at one point heroically stepping between his client and a lynch mob.

The Novel… Tying these two stories together is a

simple but profound piece of advice Atticus gives Scout at the beginning of the novel: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

By the end of the novel, Scout has done exactly that - guessed at the pain not only beneath Tom Robinson's black skin, but also under Boo’s mysterious exterior.

The novel

• Along with its twin plot lines, To Kill a

Mockingbird has two broad themes: tolerance and justice. Lee treats the first through the children‘s fear of their mysterious neighbor. She illustrates the second with Atticus' courage in defending Robinson to the best of his ability, despite the racial prejudices of their small Southern town.

The novel

• Other universal themes include

• Courage and integrity

• Compassion and empathy—seeing things from other people’s perspective

• Loss of childhood innocence

• Learning to be a “lady”

The novel

The title comes from a passage in which one of the characters explains that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because mockingbirds do nothing harmful; they just sing. We will see many examples characters who are symbolic of mockingbirds and witness a great deal of the world’s cruelty against their innocence.