To Kill a Mockingbird

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This article is about the book. For the 1962 film, see To Kill a Mockingbird (film).

**To Kill A Mockingbird**

Author	Harper Lee
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Historical novel, Social Issues
Publisher	HarperCollins
Released	1960
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	336 (Hardcover 40th Anniversary edition)
ISBN	0060194995 (Hardcover 40th Anniversary edition)

To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1960 novel by Harper Lee, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Lee's only novel, a coming-of-age story, is told from the point of view of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the young daughter of Atticus Finch, a lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama, a fictional small town in the Deep South of the United States. She is accompanied by her brother Jem and their mutual friend Dill.

1 Plot Summary
2 Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird
3 Literary significance & criticism
4 Allusions/references from other works
5 Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
6 Trivia
7 External links

[edit] Plot Summary

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Scout Finch lives with her brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, in the sleepy Alabama county of Maycomb. Maycomb is suffering through the Great Depression, but Atticus is a prominent lawyer and the Finch family is reasonably well off in comparison to the rest of society. One summer, Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Charles Baker Harris (Dill), who has come to live in their neighborhood for the summer, and the trio acts out stories together. Eventually, Dill becomes fascinated with the spooky house on their street called the Radley Place. The house is owned by Mr. Nathan Radley, whose son, Arthur (nicknamed Boo), has lived there for years without venturing outside in daylight.

Scout goes to school for the first time that fall and detests it. She and Jem find gifts apparently left for them in a knothole of a tree on the Radley property. Dill returns the following summer, and he, Scout, and Jem begin to act out the story of Boo Radley. Atticus puts a stop to their antics, urging the children to try to see life from another person’s perspective before making judgments. But on Dill’s last night in Maycomb for the summer, the three sneak onto the Radley property, where Nathan Radley shoots at them. Jem loses his pants in the ensuing escape. When he returns for them, he finds them mended and hung over the fence. The next winter, Jem and Scout find more presents in the tree, presumably left by the mysterious Boo. Nathan Radley eventually plugs the knothole with cement.

To the consternation of Maycomb’s racist white community, Atticus agrees to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Because of Atticus’s decision, Jem and Scout are subjected to abuse from other children, even when they celebrate Christmas at the family compound on Finch’s Landing. Calpurnia, the Finches’ black cook, takes them to the local black church, where the warm and close-knit community largely embraces the children.

Atticus’s sister, Alexandra, comes to live with the Finches the next summer. Dill, who is supposed to live with his “new father” in another town, runs away and comes to Maycomb. Tom Robinson’s trial begins, and when the accused man is placed in the local jail, a mob gathers to lynch him. Atticus faces the mob down the night before the trial. Jem, Dill, and Scout, who snuck out of the house, soon join him. Scout recognizes one of the men, and her polite questioning about his son shames him into dispersing the mob.

At the trial itself, the children sit in the “colored balcony” with the town’s black citizens. Atticus provides clear evidence that the accusers, Mayella Ewell and her father, Bob, are lying: in fact, Mayella propositioned Tom Robinson, was caught by her father, and then accused Tom of rape to cover her shame and guilt. Atticus provides impressive evidence that the marks on Mayella’s face are from wounds that her father inflicted; upon discovering her with Tom, he called her a whore and beat her. Yet, despite the significant evidence pointing to Tom’s innocence, the all-white jury convicts him. The innocent Tom later tries to escape from prison and is shot to death. In the aftermath of the trial, Jem’s faith in justice is badly shaken, and he lapses into despondency and doubt.

Despite the verdict, Bob Ewell feels that Atticus and the judge have made a fool out of him, and he vows revenge. He menaces Tom Robinson’s widow, tries to break into the judge’s house, and finally attacks Jem and Scout as they walk home from a halloween pageant at their school. Boo Radley intervenes, however, saving the children. Atticus at first believes that Jem fatally stabbed Mr. Ewell in the struggle. Boo carries the wounded Jem back to Atticus’s house, where the sheriff, in order to protect Boo, insists that Ewell tripped over a tree root and fell on his own knife. After sitting with Scout for a while, Scout was asked to walk Boo home. While standing on the Radley porch Scout feels sorry for Boo because she and Jem never gave him a chance, and never repaid him for the gifts that he gave them.

Later, Scout feels as though she can finally imagine what life is like for Boo. He has become a human being to her at last. With this realization, Scout embraces her father’s advice to practice sympathy and understanding and demonstrates that her experiences with hatred and prejudice will not sully her faith in human goodness.

[edit] Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird

Main article: To Kill a Mockingbird/Characters

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

Truman Capote frequently implied that he himself had written a considerable portion of this novel, and some have said he ghosted the entire novel. At least one person – Pearl Kazin Bell, an editor at Harper's – has gone on record as believing his assertions were true. However, Capote would likely have been much more aggressive in claiming credit for the novel's Pulitzer Prize had he been the real author, since he never achieved a Pulitzer for his own work. His persona was far more flamboyant than Lee's, and their writing styles reflect this difference. A letter (dated July 9, 1959) from Capote to his aunt indicates that Harper Lee did indeed write the entire book herself [1]. However, in one respect, his influence on the work is inescapable: he was the model for the major character of Dill.

Additionally, To Kill a Mockingbird is number 41 on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.[2]

[edit] Allusions/references from other works

Many references and allusions to the book can be found in popular culture, including:

In the TV series Lost, Season 3 - Episode 5, The Cost of Living, Juliet shows Jack a video tape, calling it To Kill a Mockingbird, while the tape is actually a secret message requesting his help to overthrow Ben, the apparent leader of The Others.
The 2006 film Failure To Launch contains a subplot about killing a mockingbird. The book is specifically mentioned in the gun shop scene.
The character of Boo Radley – a mysterious neighbor who lives quietly in his dark house and is feared by the local children – gave his name to the British band The Boo Radleys.
In the TV series Get Smart, Maxwell Smart hunts down the Mexican artifact, the "Tequila Mockingbird."
The Knoxville, Tennessee-based rock band Atticus was inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird.
In the DC Comics continuity, it has been established that To Kill a Mockingbird is Superman's favorite book and movie.
In 2005, the Seattle-based rock group Acceptance released an instrumental track on their album Phantoms titled "Ad Astra Per Aspera", after the Halloween pageant that Scout is in near the end of the book.
Bruce Hornsby has a song on his 1988 release Spirit Trail entitled "Sneaking Up on Boo Radley" as told from Jem's point of view.
A Flash animation called How to Kill a Mockingbird found on AwesomeFunny is a mockumentary about To Kill A Mockingbird. It starts out as a genuine description of the book, but quickly turns into a science-fiction fantasy about pirates, ninjas, nuclear explosions, various burning wildlife, and time-traveling castles.
In the romantic comedy film Mr. Deeds, Babe Bennett (Winona Ryder), a reporter concealing her identity, introduces herself as Pam Dawson from the small town of Winchestertonfieldville, Iowa. When asked by Deeds (Adam Sandler) to provide details of her growing up in Winchestertonfieldville, Iowa, she borrows from some of the characters and events in To Kill a Mockingbird. At one point she claims to have fallen out of "the Boo Radley tree" and broken her arm when she was a child.
In the movie "A Walk To Remember", Mandy Moore's character Jamie Sullivan is reading a book while eating lunch and when ask what was she reading, she lifts up the book and shows the title "To Kill A Mockingbird".
In 2001, Blink-182 band members Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus created the clothing line Atticus, named after the character in this book. Similarly, the female line of the brand is called Scout. The line's logo is a dead crow.
An episode of the popular U.S. sitcom Frasier was titled 'To Kill a Talking Bird'; a direct reference to the novel.
In one episode of The Simpsons Homer says, "I vowed never to read again after To Kill a Mockingbird gave me no useful advice on killing mockingbirds! It did teach me not to judge a man by the color of his skin, but when am I ever gonna use that?"
In the cartoon strip Frazz, Caulfield is a ham for Halloween. Frazz is the only person to guess that Caulfield is Scout Finch in the pageant.

[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The book was made into the well-received and Academy Award-winning film with the same title, To Kill a Mockingbird, in 1962. The novel was adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel as a two act play in 1960.

[edit] Trivia

Demi Moore and Bruce Willis named their daughter Scout after Jean Louise Finch.
American actor Jake Gyllenhaal named his German Shepherd Atticus and his Puggle Boo Radley after characters from the novel.
The city of Monroeville, Alabama was the author's birthplace and is believed to be the source of the setting of "Maycomb" for the book; the town promotes itself as such.
In the book Dill's aunt is called Miss Rachel Haverford and the town gossip is Miss Stephanie Crawford, whereas in the film version Miss Stephanie Crawford is the name of Dill's aunt.