To Kill a Mockingbird
The 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 the book was set,
we do hear characters using racially offensive
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.
FYI

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.
The Novel…
•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…

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.