To Kill a Mockingbird: The Influences on Harper Lees Life - Book Report/Review Example

To Kill a Mockingbird: The Influences in Harper Lee's Life To say that Harper Lee's book To Kill a Mockingbird made a difference in its time is an understatement. To Kill a Mockingbird was sensationally influential during the 1960s when chaotic events were taking place in history, when there was much struggle against racism, and when the civil rights movement was at its peak (Johnson, Gabbin, and Turner, para. 9). Written from 1955 to 1958 and published in July 11, 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird garnered a Piltzer Prize and stayed on top of the Bestseller list for 88 weeks in the same year (The Big Read 2008). Set in the 1930s in Maycomb, Alabama, and written in the point of view of a little girl named Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird talks about life in the south and its struggles with racism, sterotype, discrimination, and prejudice. Jean Louisse Finch, or Scout, is a little girl who is very intelligent, curious, observant, and outspoken ("Nelle Harper Lee" 2002 para. 6). Scout tells the story of the many childhood experiences that she and her older brother Jem encountered, as well as the experiences that have opened their eyes to how the world operates outside the fantasies and innocence of childhood (Kasper 272). Set against this world of injustice and racism of the 1930s is their father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer who is determined, liberal, and honest in his ways (Adams para. 3). He raised his children to be fair and honest, and talks to them as if they were adults, answering questions in a straightforward manner ("Studying to Kill a Mockingbird" para. 41). The struggles of Atticus Finch to defend a colored man who was indicted of raping a white girl, and the mystery behnid the person of Boo Radley is where the story revolves. To Kill a Mockingbird certainly contains much parallels with the events surrounding the 1930s, specifically racism and sexism in South America. Prejudism and Sterotyping The theme of the novel may be seen through the title, which is a metpahor for harming innocent and defenseless people ("Studying to Kill a Mockingbird" para. 67). In chapter 10, after being given rifles as Christmas presents, Atticus tells his children not to kill mockingbirds as it is a sin to do so. This confuses Scout so she asks Miss Maudie about it. Her reply was fairly accurate in metaphor: "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, they don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. " (Lee 74 para. 9) Tom Robinson, a handicapped black man, was accused of raping Mayella Ewell who belongs to a family of uneducated and poor whites. Out of a sense of duty, obligation, and because Atticus was a courageous, fair, and liberal man, he accepted the task of defending Robinson. The series of trials then reveal that Mayella Ewell made sexual advances on Robinson, and was then caught by her father in doing so (Dorr 711). Despite these facts and Atticus' efforts in proving that Robinson was not guilty of the charges pressed against him, Robinson was a lost cause and was hence sentenced as guilty. During this period of time in the South, black men were not allowed to mingle with white women, and this served as an eye-opener for Scout that racism was very much a hard issue to battle with (Dorr 711). She said that "Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed" (Lee 254). Racial prejudice makes white men unreasonable in their judgement and ultimately deprives African-American men of the right to a just trial, and even a comfortable, worry-free life (Dorr 712). As Atticus stated, "people go stark-raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up" (qtd. from Dorr 712). In the current events period of Scout's class, Hitler and the persecution of the Jews was discussed. The Jews were even referred to as "feeble-minded" people who were being "washed" (Lee 190). The Nazi Situation may as well be likened to the racism flowing in Southern America. The Jews may hence be likened to the Negroes who were being discriminated, stripped of human rights, treated as slaves and minorities. Apparently, the prejudice that was then prolific not only occurred in South America but also in the rest of the world. Miss Gates then briefly explained what persecution is "persecution comes from people who are prejudiced" (Lee 191). And indeed was the people of Maycomb prejudiced for they treated the death of Tom Robinson as something expected. "To Maycomb, Tom's death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw" (Lee 188). This line goes to show that prejudice blinds a man in judgement and in the world of Maycomb County; this was a way of life. The character of Arthur (Boo) Radley, on the other hand, symbolizes that each man is the same regardless of color. Boo Radley is a man who has been living in the spooky Radley place for years, and yet has never been seen out of the house (Kasper 272). Because of this, Boo was labeled as creepy, weird, and deranged, and most of the time scary and evil (Kasper 273). The way that the people of Maycomb perceived Boo shows that they hold prejudice as well against those who behave outside the norms of society. The character of Boo was then put to light when he saved Jem and Scout from Mayella Ewell's father, who tried to kill the children as revenge against Atticus. Through this situation, Scout realizes that Boo was a kind man after all, and that she must not let herself be blinded by fears and misunderstandings that the prejudiced society brings (Topham para. 6). Again, given this situation, the novel implies that one may be labelled as something negative yet this is only mere prejudice as the man is the same as other men-good in nature. In the issue of prejudice, it was not only Negroes or people acting strangely who belonged in the group of minorities. Women, at the time, were also prejudiced. Women were expected to act, dress, speak, and generally behave in a certain manner. They were considered subordinates of men. As Scout was boyish, there were several remarks in the book toward how she should act. In chapter 11, Scout was reprimanded by Mrs. Dubose for being very outspoken. Furthermore, Mrs. Dubose remarked that she should be wearing a dress and a camisole instead of overalls, else she'd be waiting tables if she is not corrected with her ways (Lee 80). In addition to this, Scout's Aunt Alexandra was as well frustrated by her boyish behavior. "When I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing anything that required pants. Aunt Alexandra's vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father's lonely life. I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year." (qtd. from Shackelford 101). The Life of Harper Lee Despite being a talented writer, Nelle Harper Lee never wrote another novel again aside from this one-hit piece of literature, To Kill a Mockingbird (Legge 74). This novel holds many parallels to the real life of the author. Born on April 28, 1926 during the Great Depression in Monroeville Alabama, Harper Lee was the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee (Harper Academic para. 1). One cannot miss the parallels here as the setting of the novel was Maycomb County, a rural southern town in Alabama in the 1930s, similar to that of Monroeville (Johnson, Gabbin, & Turner n.d.). Aside from this, Harper Lee's father was a state legislature attorney like Atticus Finch (Johnson, Gabbin, & Turner n.d.). Unmissable as well is the middle name of Harper Lee's mother, which is Finch, the same last name of Scout. As Scout was implied as boyish in the novel, Harper Lee was as well boyish in her childhood days (The Big Read 2008). During the 1930s, when Harper Lee was growing up as a young girl was the time of the great depression, when people were mostly unemployed, losing their lands, and instead of being payed with cash, were being paid with produce in turn for their professional services (Johnson 5). As Harper Lee grew up in this rural town in Alabama, she was able to experience firsthand the racism that flowed in the south. She went to separate schools from the Negroes, went to a separate church, had separate health care institutions, and so forth (Johnson 83). Hence, the experiences described by Scout in the Novel were very vivid in detail as well as very poignant. As follows, there is unmistakable parallel between the case of Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro Trial, a phenomenal case in 1930s where a group of African-American men were accused by a group of women of rape (Johnson 15). "On March 25, 1931, several groups of white and black men and two white women were riding the rails from Tennessee to Alabama in various open and closed railroad cars designed to carry freight and gravel. At one point on the trip, the black and white men began fighting. One white man would later testify that the AfricanAmericans started the fight, and another white man would later claim that the white men had started the fight. In any case, most of the white men were thrown off the train. When the train arrived at Paint Rock, Alabama, all those riding the rails--including nine black men, at least one white man, and the two white women-were arrested, probably on charges of vagrancy. The white women remained under arrest in jail for several days, pending charges of vagrancy and possible violation of the Mann Act. The Mann Act prohibited the taking of a minor across state lines for immoral purposes, like prostitution. Because Victoria Price was a known prostitute, the police were tipped off (very likely by the mother of the underaged Ruby Bates) that the two women were involved in s criminal act when they left Tennessee for Alabama. Upon leaving the train, the two women immediately accused the AfricanAmerican men of raping them in an open railroad car (referred to as a "gondola") that was carrying gravel (or, as it was called, "chert"). he trial of the nine men began on April 6, 1931, only twelve days after the arrest, and continued through April 9, 1931. The chief witnesses included the two women accusers, one white man who had remained on the train and corroborated their accusations, another acquaintance of the women who refused to corroborate their accusations, the physician who examined the women, and the accused nine black men. The accused claimed that they had not even been in the same car with the women, and the defense attorneys also argued that one of the accused was blind and another too sickly to walk unassisted and thus could not have committed such a violent crime. On April 9, 1931, eight of the nine were sentenced to death; a mistrial was declared for the ninth because of his youth. The executions were suspended pending court appeals, which eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States." (qtd. from Johnson 16) This famous case in Scottsboro in 1931 is an example of how racism ceased the delivery of justice in Alabama where Harper Lee grew up. This is only one example about the many injustices that blacks were made to experience back then. In addition to this, the Scottsboro trials and Tom Robinson's case exemplified the stereotype against the "white trash" or the poor whites (Johnson 139). The characters in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird had resemblances to the citizens of Monroeville and the family and friends of Harper Lee (Person B08). For instance, the character Dill resembled the real person of Truman Capote, with whom Harper Lee and her older brother were friends with back in their childhood days (Johnson, Gabbin, & Turner n.d.). Capote lived next door from Harper Lee and her family with his aunts and uncles (The Big Read 2008). When Capote was in third grade, he moved to New York to live with his mother and stepfather, but stayed in Monroeville with his aunt and uncle during the summers (The Big Read 2008). Gladys Watson Burkett, Harper Lee's high school English teacher, may be likened to Miss Gates, Scout's teacher who encouraged open-minded thinking and did not reprimand Scout whenever she had an opinion she needed to share or an intelligent question to ask (The Big Read 2008). In addition to this, as mentioned above, Harper Lee's father Amasa Cole was a lawyer as well who worked for the state legislature. Consequently, Harper Lee's father defended two black men who were accused of murdering a storekeeper who was a white man (The Big Read 2008). The two black men were hanged. Harper Lee was raised by her father to be open-minded and liberal. As his father even defended two black men, it is hence obvious that his father set an example that being judgemental and prejudice is not an honorable thing to do. The character that Atticus portrayed is similar, if not completely the same, to that of her father's, Amasa Cole Lee. The idealized character of the central heroic figure was in fact named after Titus Pomponius Atticus, "a wise, learned and humane man" who was a friend of Cicero, a Roman orator (qtd. from The Big Read 2008). Conclusion The novel To Kill a Mockingbird was inspired by true events in the life of the Author, Nelle Harper Lee. Beautifully written and poignant in its story-telling style and form, Harper Lee was successful in not only stirring the hearts of its reader, but also successful in relaying its political message about racism and prejudice in the 1930s in Southern America and even the rest of the world (Topham para. 8). To Kill A Mockingbird challenges the readers' beliefs regarding prejudice and stereotypes of African-Americans, southerners, women, men, children, and the eccentric, and encourages one to become a better person, citizen, and neighbor (Johnson xi). It teaches its readers, primarily through the character of Atticus Finch, that man, regardless of color, sex, or social status, is the same. Through his character, empathy is also implied. As Atticus said: "you never really understand a person unless you consider things from his point of view until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." (Lee 20) Works Cited Adams, Phoebe. "To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee." The Atlantic Online. August 1960. 9 May 2008. . Dorr, Lisa Lindquist. "Black-on-White Rape and Retribution in Twentieth-Century Virginia: "Men, Even Negroes, Must Have Some Protection." Journal of Southern History 66.4 (2000): 711-744. Johnson, Claudia Durst. Understanding to Kill a Mockingbird: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. Johnson, Claudia Durst, Gabbin, Joanne V., & Turner, Catherine. "Historical Background." ThinkQuest. 9 May 2008. . Kasper, Anne. "General Semantics in To Kill a Mockingbird." ETC: A Review of General Semantics 63.3 (2006): 272-274. Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960. Legge, Charles. "The One-Lit Wonders; Taking a Stand: Gregory Peck in to Kill A Mockingbird." The Daily Mail 3 January 2008: 74. National Endowment for the Arts. "To Kill a Mockingbird: About the Author." The Big Read. 2008. 9 May 2008. . "Nelle Harper Lee." 2002. 8 May 2008. . Person, James E. Jr. "Life of Elusive Harper Lee, and Her Most Quiet Ways." The Washington Times 11 June 2006: B08. Shackelford, Dean. "The female voice in 'To Kill a Mockingbird': narrative strategies in film and novel." The Mississippi Quarterly 50.1 (1996): 101-110. "Studying To Kill a Mockingbird." 8 May 2008. . "To Kill a Mockingbird." HarperAcademic.com. 8 May 2008. . Topham, James. "To Kill a Mockingbird." 2008. About.com: Classic Literature. 8 May 2008. . Read More