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Background of
To Kill a Mockingbird
Scout
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Atticus Finch & Tom Robinson
Presented by Mr. Afram
Harper Lee today
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Scout playing w/the boys
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Introduction
• To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most widelyDowntown Monroeville, AL
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read books in the American high school
system. First published in 1960, it immediately
received the Pulitzer Prize, one of the world’s
greatest awards for literature, in 1961.
• It’s considered a modern-day classic, and a
group of British librarians said that TKM is the
one book that every person should read before
dying.
Harper Lee in the ‘60s
Table of Contents
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• Setting
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• 1930s
• The South
• Scottsboro Boys & Emmett Till
• Literary Elements
• Southern Gothic
• Bildungsroman
• Voice of the Narrator
Typical small-town courthouse
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• Harper Lee
• Essential Questions
• Works Cited
Mockingbird
State of Alabama
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Setting: The 1930s
• During the Great Depression, the world
Unemployment was at 25%
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Bread lines
economy collapsed. Most economists
believe that the Depression was due to the
crash of the US stock market, which had a
ripple effect across the world.
• The collapse of the stock market led to
bank failures, and many people couldn’t
retrieve money from the banks (Kelly).
• Finally, there was a severe drought in the
Mississippi Valley, and it was hard to
produce crops (Kelly).
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Setting: The South
• The novel portrays the South as:
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1. Proud of its history;
2. Deeply segregated; and
3. With a profound divide between
the rich and poor.
• In other words, the South hasn’t
seen its glory days in a long time!
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Setting: Scottsboro Boys
• In 1931, nine black youths (between the
Scottsboro boys
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Victoria Price & Ruby Bates
ages of 12 and 20) were falsely accused of
raping two white women on a freight train
in Alabama. The trial was held in the
small town of Scottsboro, and eight of the
youths were sentenced to death
(Wormser).
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Setting: Emmett Till
• In 1955, Emmett Till, a fifteen year-old boy
from Chicago, was visiting family in Money,
Mississippi. While there, he reportedly
flirted with a white female clerk at the
grocery store. Four days later, two white
men kidnapped Till, beat him, and shot him
in the head.
• Till’s mother, Mamie, insisted on an open
casket funeral, and Emmett Till’s violent
death helped galvanize the emerging civil
rights movement (A & E Networks).
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Literary Elements, Part I
• Southern Gothic: a literary style involving the
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following elements: disturbed characters,
decaying settings, flexible gender roles, and
elements of poverty, racism, and violence
(Wikipedia.org)
• Bildungsroman: type of literature that involves
the main character’s shift from innocence to
experience or maturity (Princeton.edu)
Literary Elements, Part II
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• Because TKM is a bildungsroman, and
written from Scout’s perspective, the
reader must always question the reliability
of Scout’s narration. She isn’t lying, per se,
she’s just sharing her perspective.
• Example: “_______________ was about sixand-a-half feet tall…[and] he dined on raw
squirrels and any cats he could catch…There
was a long jagged scar that ran across his face”
(Lee 16).
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Harper Lee, Part I
• Born on April 28, 1926, Lee grew up in
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Monroeville, AL. She was the youngest of
four children (McGraw-Hill).
• Her father was a lawyer and also a state
legislator. Sadly, her mother had a serious case
of mental illness (bipolar?) and she rarely left
the home (A&E Networks).
• She attended the University of Alabama and
planned on being a lawyer, but later decided to
be a writer.
• As a child, she befriended Truman Capote,
who also became a famous writer.
Harper Lee, Part II
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• In 1949(at age 23), Lee moved to NYC in
hopes of becoming a writer. By 1957 she
had finished a draft of TKM (McGrawHill).
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• TKM was published in 1960, and the novel
receive the Pulitzer Prize, in 1961. The
book was made into an Academy Awardwinning film.
• TKM is Lee’s only novel, and she largely
avoids media attention.
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Essential Questions
• What does it mean “to do the
right thing?”
• What are your principles?
• How do you stand up for your
principles?
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Works Cited
"Bildungsroman." Bildungsroman. Princeton.edu, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Bildungsroman.html>.
"Harper Lee Biography." www.biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 2013. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.biography.com/people/harper-lee-9377021?page=1>.
Kelly, Martin. "Top 5 Causes of the Great Depression." About.com American History. About.com, 2013. Web. 27
Oct. 2013. <http://americanhistory.about.com/od/greatdepression/tp/greatdepression.htm>.
"Southern Gothic." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_gothic>.
Study Guide for To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, n.d. Print.
Wormser, Richard. "The Scottsboro Case." PBS. PBS, 2002. Web. 27 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_scotts.html>.