To Kill a Mocking Bird

Background of Author

Harper Lee, the novelist of “To Kill a Mocking Bird” was born in Monroeville, Alabama on April 28, 1926. Her complete name was Nelle Harper Lee. She was the youngest amongst four children. Amasa Lee, her father, was a lawyer by profession. Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, her mother, belonged to one of the founding families of Finchburg, Alabama.

She attended Huntingdon College, Montgomery, Alabama for a year in 1944, and then moved to the University of Alabama to pursue a degree in law. She did not complete her degree and chose to shift to New York to become a writer, just when she was a semester away from graduation.

Lee wrote various short stories and essays and showed it to a literary agent in New York, who gave her the confidence to shape up one of the stories in to a novel. That particular novel is known as "To Kill a Mockingbird." This novel was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.

Later on Lee wrote a small number of articles for different magazines like "Vogue" and "McCalls". In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson inducted Lee in the National Council on the Arts whereas in November 2007, US President George W. Bush awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was conferred with a lot of honorary degrees.

Historical Background of the Story

The story “To kill a mocking bird”is set around the year 1930 in a small fictionist town called Maycomb. The United States had become a strong nation by that time and was further developing. Even though Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, had brought slavery of the blacks to an end they were still considered inferior, were paid low and their lives were devoid of any law (Barkan, 180). The purpose of this novel was to condemn prejudices and racism in the society. Lee raised her voice against the enslavement of the judiciary and police to the power of economy.

The trials of Scottsboro began in Alabama when Lee was five years old. In this trial nine black men were blamed for raping two white women. The accused men were almost killed even before the trial began. Medical reports handed over to the trial revealed that the women were not raped, still the men were convicted and apart from a youngest everyone was sentenced to death. This case became the foundation for Lee's novel. The United States Supreme Court overturned the judgment of the lower court in 1932 and the defendants of Scottsboro received new trials.

Summary

Scout Finch is a small girl who lives with her elder brother Jem and father Atticus in the superficial town of Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus is a widower who raises his children with the help from a black housekeeper named Calpurnia and scouts' aunt Alexandra. Both the children are mystified by the strange neighbor, Arthur Radley, nicknamed Boo, who never comes out of his house.

Scout and Jem soon find out that their father will be representing a black man who is ...