To Kill a Mockingbird
Based on Wikipedia: To Kill a Mockingbird
In 1960, a young woman from Alabama published her first novel. She expected it to die a quick death at the hands of reviewers. Instead, it became the most widely read book about race in twentieth-century America, won the Pulitzer Prize, and transformed how millions of people think about justice, courage, and the complicated inheritance of the American South.
The book was To Kill a Mockingbird. The author was Harper Lee. And the story she told—of a small-town lawyer defending a black man falsely accused of rape, seen through the eyes of his young daughter—would become something close to American scripture.
A Story That Almost Wasn't
Harper Lee never intended to write a classic. Born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, she grew up as a scrappy tomboy who loved books and wasn't afraid of a fight. Her closest childhood friend was a peculiar, precocious boy named Truman Persons—later known to the world as Truman Capote, one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century.
The two of them were what Capote called "apart people"—kids who didn't quite fit in with their peers. They spent their days making up stories and typing them out on an old Underwood typewriter that Lee's father had given them. They were fascinated by a mysterious neighbor whose family kept him hidden inside their boarded-up house for decades. They watched the adults of their small Southern town navigate the treacherous waters of race, class, and respectability.
All of this would find its way into Lee's novel, though the path from childhood observations to published book was far from straight.
Lee studied law at the University of Alabama but never finished her degree. In 1950, she moved to New York City and took a job as a reservation clerk for British Overseas Airways Corporation. In her spare time, she wrote—essays and short stories about the people she'd grown up with in Monroeville.
In 1957, with Capote's help, she found a literary agent. An editor at the publishing house J. B. Lippincott bought her manuscript and told her to quit her airline job and focus on writing.
But the book wasn't ready. Not even close.
Two and a Half Years of Revision
The manuscript Lee submitted was originally titled "Go Set a Watchman." It was, as her editor Tay Hohoff later described it, "more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel." The spark of talent was unmistakable, but the book needed fundamental restructuring.
What followed was an intensive collaboration. For two and a half years, Hohoff guided Lee through draft after draft. The story shifted. The focus changed. What had been a book primarily about an adult woman returning to her hometown became something different—a story told from the perspective of a child, looking back on three crucial years in the 1930s.
The title changed too. "Go Set a Watchman" was rejected. For a while, they called it simply "Atticus," after the father character who would become one of fiction's most beloved moral heroes. But Lee felt that title was too limiting. The story wasn't just about one man. It was about a whole community, about innocence and its destruction, about the mockingbirds of the world—the harmless ones who do nothing but sing and are destroyed anyway.
To Kill a Mockingbird was published on July 11, 1960.
The editorial team warned Lee she'd probably sell a few thousand copies.
The Story Itself
The novel is set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. Our narrator is Jean Louise Finch, known to everyone as Scout. She's six years old when the story begins, living with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer.
The Finch household also includes Calpurnia, their black cook, who has helped raise the children for years and serves as a bridge between the white and black worlds of Maycomb.
Scout's summers are defined by two obsessions. The first is her friendship with Dill, a small, imaginative boy who visits Maycomb each year to stay with his aunt. The second is the children's fascination with Boo Radley.
Boo is a mystery. He lives in a run-down house nearby, but no one has seen him in years. The adults of Maycomb refuse to discuss him. Local legend holds that he's some kind of monster—that he eats squirrels raw and peeps in windows at night. The children spend their summers inventing schemes to lure him outside, feeding each other's fears and fantasies.
But someone is watching them in return.
Small gifts start appearing in the knothole of a tree outside the Radley place. A ball of twine. Two carved soap figurines that look remarkably like Scout and Jem. A spelling medal. A pocket watch. The invisible Boo is reaching out in the only way he can.
The Trial
The heart of the novel is a courtroom drama. Tom Robinson, a black man, has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. In the Alabama of the 1930s, such an accusation was essentially a death sentence, regardless of the evidence.
Judge Taylor appoints Atticus Finch to defend Tom. It's not a popular decision. Atticus is called a "nigger-lover" by his neighbors. Other children taunt Jem and Scout. One night, a mob of men comes to the jail intending to lynch Tom before he can stand trial.
Scout, Jem, and Dill show up unexpectedly. Scout, not understanding the danger, recognizes one of the men—Mr. Cunningham, the father of a classmate—and starts talking to him about his son. She asks him to say hello to Walter for her. She mentions the legal work Atticus has done for the Cunningham family.
It's a child's innocent conversation. And it breaks the spell. Mr. Cunningham, suddenly ashamed, tells the mob to disperse. They leave without violence.
The trial itself is a masterpiece of dramatic tension. Atticus systematically dismantles the prosecution's case. He establishes that Mayella's injuries were inflicted by someone left-handed—and Tom Robinson's left arm is crippled, withered and useless since a childhood accident. He demonstrates that Mayella's father, Bob Ewell, is left-handed and has a history of violence.
The truth emerges: Mayella, lonely and desperate, made a sexual advance toward Tom. Her father caught them and beat her savagely. To cover up what actually happened, the Ewells accused Tom of rape.
None of it matters.
The all-white jury convicts Tom Robinson anyway. In the calculus of 1930s Alabama, a black man's word could never outweigh a white woman's, no matter how overwhelming the evidence.
The Destruction of Innocence
The verdict devastates Jem. He's old enough to understand what justice should mean and young enough to believe it should actually happen. The gap between the ideal and the reality nearly breaks him.
Atticus remains hopeful. He believes he can win on appeal. But Tom Robinson has lost faith. Before the appeal can proceed, Tom tries to escape from prison. The guards shoot him seventeen times.
Bob Ewell, meanwhile, has been publicly humiliated. Atticus destroyed his credibility on the witness stand, revealing him as a liar and an abuser. Ewell vows revenge. He spits in Atticus's face. He tries to break into the judge's house. He stalks Tom Robinson's widow.
And on a dark night after a school pageant, when Jem and Scout are walking home alone, Ewell attacks them.
In the confusion and darkness, someone intervenes. Ewell is killed. Jem is carried home unconscious with a broken arm.
Their rescuer turns out to be Boo Radley.
The monster of the children's imagination is revealed as a gentle, damaged man who has watched over them all along. He saved their lives. And now Scout finally meets him—not as the bogeyman of neighborhood legend, but as a shy, fragile human being who can barely speak above a whisper.
The Real People Behind the Fiction
Harper Lee always insisted that To Kill a Mockingbird was not autobiography. But the parallels between her life and Scout's are impossible to ignore.
Lee's father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was an attorney in Monroeville—just like Atticus Finch. In 1919, he defended two black men accused of murder. They were convicted, hanged, and their bodies mutilated by a mob. He never took another criminal case.
The character of Dill was modeled directly on Truman Capote, Lee's childhood friend. Like Dill in the novel, Capote visited Monroeville during summers to stay with relatives while his mother was in New York. Like Dill, he had an astonishing imagination and a talent for captivating stories. He also had a lisp and an advanced vocabulary that made other children ridicule him.
Down the street from the Lees lived a family whose house was always boarded up. The son had gotten into some legal trouble, and his father, ashamed, kept him confined to the house for twenty-four years. He became the model for Boo Radley. The real man died in 1952, virtually forgotten.
The origins of Tom Robinson are murkier but no less rooted in reality. When Lee was ten years old, a black man named Walter Lett was accused of raping a white woman near Monroeville. Lee's father's newspaper covered the trial. Lett was convicted and sentenced to death, though his sentence was later commuted after letters emerged suggesting he'd been falsely accused. He died of tuberculosis in prison in 1937.
Scholars have also connected Tom Robinson to the infamous Scottsboro Boys case, in which nine black teenagers were convicted of raping two white women on a freight train in 1931. The evidence was negligible, the trials were travesties, and the case became an international cause célèbre that exposed the brutality of Southern justice.
Why the Novel Works
The genius of To Kill a Mockingbird lies in its voice. Lee tells this heavy story—rape, racism, violence, injustice—through the eyes of a child who doesn't fully understand what she's witnessing. Scout sees everything but comprehends only fragments. The reader must piece together the adult implications from a child's innocent observations.
This creates what critics have called a "delightfully deceptive" narrative. The simplicity of Scout's perspective makes the horror more bearable. Her confusion about why people behave so badly mirrors our own. And her father's patient explanations become lessons for us as well as for her.
But the technique also produces humor. Scout is, in the words of one critic, "hysterically funny." Her observations about her neighbors, her certainty about the world, her willingness to solve problems with her fists—all of it lightens material that could otherwise be unbearable.
When Dill promises to marry her but then spends all his time with Jem, Scout concludes that the best way to regain his attention is to beat him up. Which she does. Several times.
Her first day of school is a satirical masterpiece. Her teacher, Miss Caroline, is horrified to discover that Scout already knows how to read—Atticus has been teaching her at home. Miss Caroline insists that Scout must "undo" this damage and forbids Atticus from teaching her further. Scout cannot understand why knowing how to read is a problem.
Neither can we.
Atticus Finch and the Idea of Heroism
No discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird can avoid Atticus Finch. He has become, as one historian put it, "the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism" in American literature.
Atticus is not a crusader. He doesn't seek out the Robinson case or want the attention it brings. He takes it because the judge assigns it to him and because, as he explains to Scout, he couldn't hold up his head in town if he didn't defend Tom to the best of his ability.
His heroism lies not in grand gestures but in quiet integrity. He treats everyone with respect—black or white, rich or poor. He doesn't condemn the mob that came to lynch Tom; he understands that individuals can be decent even when crowds turn ugly. He doesn't gloat when he destroys the Ewells' credibility; he takes no pleasure in exposing their lies.
He teaches his children to understand other people by imagining life from their perspective. "You never really understand a person," he tells Scout, "until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
For generations of lawyers, Atticus Finch has been a moral lodestar. Studies have found that more people have been inspired to enter the legal profession by To Kill a Mockingbird than by any other work of fiction. He represents what the law could be at its best: a bulwark protecting the powerless from the powerful, truth against lies, justice against prejudice.
Whether he's an entirely realistic figure is another question. Some critics have argued that Atticus is too good, too perfect, too conveniently ahead of his time. He's a white savior in a narrative that keeps its black characters largely in the background. Tom Robinson, the supposed focus of the trial, barely speaks. His humanity is filtered through white perceptions.
These criticisms gained force in 2015, when Go Set a Watchman—the original manuscript that eventually became To Kill a Mockingbird—was finally published. In that earlier version of the story, Atticus is revealed to hold segregationist views. The heroic father of the famous novel appears, in his first incarnation, as a more complicated and troubling figure.
The Mockingbird's Meaning
Why a mockingbird?
The title comes from a piece of advice Atticus gives his children when they receive air rifles for Christmas. He tells them they can shoot all the bluejays they want, but it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. Why? Because mockingbirds don't do anything except make music. They don't eat people's gardens or nest in corncribs. They just sing their hearts out for us.
The mockingbird becomes a symbol for innocence—for those who do no harm and are destroyed anyway. Tom Robinson is a mockingbird, a man who only tried to help and was killed for it. Boo Radley is a mockingbird, a gentle soul damaged by cruelty and misunderstanding.
The novel asks us to consider how often we destroy what is harmless and good, either through malice or through the carelessness that comes from failing to see people as they really are.
The Book's Afterlife
When To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Reader's Digest immediately selected it for their Condensed Books series, guaranteeing a massive audience. Within a year, it had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It has never gone out of print.
In 1962, the novel was adapted into a film starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the film became nearly as beloved as the book. Horton Foote's screenplay won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The novel is now one of the most commonly assigned books in American middle schools and high schools. Surveys consistently rank it among the most influential books in readers' lives. In 2006, British librarians ranked it ahead of the Bible as the book every adult should read before they die.
Yet the book has also faced persistent challenges. Parents and school boards have sought to remove it from curricula, most often because of its use of racial slurs—the "n-word" appears throughout the text, as it would have in the speech of 1930s Alabama. Critics argue that this language traumatizes black students and that the book's white-savior narrative does more harm than good.
Defenders counter that sanitizing history helps no one, that the book's frank portrayal of racism is precisely what makes it valuable as a teaching tool, and that its message of empathy and justice remains urgent.
Harper Lee's Silence
After To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee essentially disappeared from public life. She gave her last interview in 1964 and spent the next five decades guarding her privacy with fierce determination.
She never published another novel—at least not intentionally. Go Set a Watchman, that original manuscript she'd submitted in the 1950s, finally appeared in 2015 under circumstances that remain controversial. Lee was eighty-nine years old, in poor health, and living in an assisted care facility. Questions were raised about whether she truly consented to the publication or whether she was manipulated by those around her.
Lee died in February 2016, at the age of eighty-nine, in the same town where she'd been born and which she'd transformed into one of the most famous small towns in American literature.
She left behind a single perfect novel—a book that continues to shape how Americans think about justice, prejudice, and the possibility of moral courage in an unjust world.
What the Book Teaches
At its core, To Kill a Mockingbird is about the difficulty of doing right in a world that often punishes righteousness. Atticus Finch knows he will lose Tom Robinson's case. He takes it anyway, because some things matter more than winning.
The novel is also about seeing clearly. Scout learns to look past the legends about Boo Radley and see the human being underneath. Atticus tries to teach the town to see past the color of Tom Robinson's skin to the evidence in front of them. The tragedy is that most of them cannot—or will not.
And the book is about childhood and its end. Scout and Jem begin the story believing that the world is fundamentally fair, that adults are wise, that goodness will triumph. The trial of Tom Robinson shatters these illusions. What remains afterward is something more complicated: the knowledge that the world is broken, and the determination to try to fix it anyway.
This is why the novel endures. It doesn't offer easy answers or happy endings. Tom Robinson dies. The jury that convicted him faces no consequences. Bob Ewell's death is covered up to protect Boo Radley, meaning that justice, such as it is, happens outside the law that Atticus has devoted his life to serving.
But Atticus keeps going. Scout keeps growing. And somewhere in Maycomb, mockingbirds keep singing.
That, Harper Lee seems to say, will have to be enough.