NEA Big Read NEA Big Read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they’re quite different from people who must write. About the Author Harper Lee (1926-2016) If Nelle Harper Lee ever wanted proof that fame has its drawbacks, she didn't have to look farther than her childhood neighbor, Truman Capote. After her enormously successful first novel, she lived a life as private as Capote's was public. Nelle—her first name was her grandmother's spelled backward—was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. Her mother, Frances Cunningham Finch Lee, was a homemaker. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, practiced law. Before A.C. Lee became a title lawyer, he once defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both clients, a father and son, were hanged. As a child, Harper Lee was an unruly tomboy. She fought on the playground. She talked back to teachers. She was bored with school and resisted any sort of conformity.

The character of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird would have liked her. In high school Lee was fortunate to have a gifted English teacher, Gladys Watson Burkett, who introduced her to challenging literature and the rigors of writing well. Lee loved nineteenth-century British authors best, and once said that her ambition was to become "the Jane Austen of south Alabama." Unable to fit in with the sorority she joined at the University of Alabama, she found a second home on the campus newspaper. Eventually she became editor-in-chief of the Rammer Jammer, a quarterly humor magazine on campus. She entered the law school, but she "loathed" it. Despite her father's hopes that she would become a local attorney like her sister Alice, Lee went to New York to pursue her writing. She spent eight years working odd jobs before she finally showed a manuscript to Tay Hohoff, an editor at J.B. Lippincott. At this point, it still resembled a string of stories more than the novel that Lee had intended. Under Hohoff's guidance, the perspective was changed to Scout as a child, and two and a half years of rewriting followed.

When the novel was finally ready for publication, the author opted for the name "Harper Lee" on the cover, because she didn't want to be misidentified as "Nellie." To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 to highly favorable reviews and quickly climbed the bestseller lists, where it remained for eighty-eight weeks. In 1961, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize. Lee later researched a book, similar to Capote's In Cold Blood (1966), about a part-time minister in Alexander City, Alabama, accused of killing five people for their insurance money and later himself murdered by a victim's relative. However, she dropped the project in the 1990s. It wasn't until February of 2015 that news of a second novel surfaced, when Lee's publisher announced a newly discovered manuscript for Go Set a Watchman, the novel Lee wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird. In the meantime, To Kill a Mockingbird has sold more than thirty million copies in forty languages. In 2011, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts. According to biographer Charles J.

Shields, Lee was unprepared for the amount of personal attention associated with writing a bestseller. She led a quiet and guardedly private life. As Sheriff Tate says of Boo Radley, "draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight—to me, that's a sin." So it would be with Harper Lee. The Friendship of Harper Lee and Truman Capote Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote became friends in the early 1930s as kindergarteners in Monroeville, Alabama. They lived next door to each other: Capote with aunts and uncles, Lee with her parents and three siblings. From the start they loved reading and recognized in each other "an apartness," as Capote later expressed it. When Lee's father gave them an old Underwood typewriter, they began writing original stories. Although Capote moved to New York City in the third grade to join his mother and stepfather, he returned to Monroeville most summers, eventually providing the inspiration for Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1948 Capote published his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Around that time, Lee quit law school and joined Capote in New York to work at becoming a writer, too. Years of menial jobs followed until To Kill a Mockingbird was ready for publication. Capote read the manuscript and made editorial suggestions. She, in her turn, accompanied him to Kansas to help research In Cold Blood. After To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Capote resented Lee's success. He could have tried harder to dispel baseless rumors that the novel was as much his work as hers. Their friendship continued during the 1960s and '70s, but Capote's drug and alcohol abuse strained the relationship. Later he would stop publishing and sink into self-parody, sponging off high society and making endless rounds of the talk-show circuit. When Capote died in 1984, Lee confided to friends that she hadn't heard from him in years. Get involved with NEA Big Read!

Who Wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” Who Wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird” 22 Nov, 2012 who wrote 0 “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a multi award winning fictional novel first published on July 11, 1960. The book was widely acclaimed, but also caused much controversy at the time because it deals with the issues of racism, rape, justice, morality, human nature, social inequality and education. However, these themes also meant that the book became one of the most popular school study books. The story is told through the eyes of the young child Scout Finch and much of it centers on her father’s defence of a black man falsely accused of rape. “To Kill a Mockingbird” was an extremely successful book and it spent more than 80 weeks on the bestseller list. In 1961 it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has since become a modern classic of modern literature. Let’s find out who wrote this important book. Who wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

“To Kill a Mockingbird” was written by American author Harper Lee and was loosely based on observations throughout her life and from an actual event in her hometown when she was young. She attended both Huntingdon College and the University of Alabama where she wrote short stories. She moved to New York in 1950 and began writing about people from her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. In 1957 she presented some of her work to a publishing agent. An editor was so impressed that he encouraged her to quit her job and write her book. She spent about two and a half years writing the book before it was published in 1960. The team of editors at her publisher warned Lee that her book would probably not be well accepted and that it would struggle to sell. Fortunately for Lee they couldn’t have been more wrong! Did you know? Lee became so frustrated while writing the book that she threw it out of the window into the snow. Her editor had to convince her to retrieve it! “To Kill a Mockingbird” is the only work ever published by Harper Lee and she virtually withdrew from public life after publication.

In 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest award given to a civilian in the United States. Related Articles Letter Puts End to Persistent 'Mockingbird' Rumor : NPR Letter Puts End to Persistent 'Mockingbird' Rumor Embed Embed Letter Puts End to Persistent 'Mockingbird' Rumor Letter Puts End to Persistent 'Mockingbird' Rumor Embed Embed March 3, 20064:00 PM ET Melissa Block New evidence may end the decades-old speculation that Truman Capote — not Harper Lee — wrote the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Dr. Wayne Flynt, retired professor of history from Auburn University discusses the basis for the persistent rumor and explains why it is indeed false. MELISSA BLOCK, Host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. In the decades since Harper Lee published TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in 1960, her novel has been shadowed by a persistent rumor.

The speculation has been that Lee's long time friend Truman Capote either wrote or heavily edited the book, which would go on to be a bestseller and win the Pulitzer Prize. Well, now a letter from Truman Capote to his aunt, dated July 9, 1959, should help put that rumor to rest. Joining us to talk about it is Wayne Flynt. He is a retired history professor at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. And he has researched the writings of both Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Welcome. WAYNE FLYNT: Thank you. BLOCK: Let's talk first about this letter from Truman Capote. It's now been made public. It was, as I understand it, given to a museum from a cousin of Mr. Capote. What does it say and how does it help quash this rumor? FLYNT: Essentially, it says that a year before the novel was published in July of 1960, that Capote had seen the novel, had read much of the book, and liked it very much, and commented that she has great talent. And nowhere in the letter does he claim any involvement whatsoever in the book.

BLOCK: And by saying that he's seen it would appear to put some distance at least with it? FLYNT: That's correct. That's correct. BLOCK: How did this rumor get started in the first place? FLYNT: Well, some claim Pearl Belle, who is a literary critic and editor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has actually claimed that Capote implied to her that he had written the book or had a good deal to do with the writing of the book. I think probably the rumor results from the fact that TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is the only published book that Harper Lee ever did. BLOCK: Yeah, that that would fuel it. In other words, she was one and done, and if she were such a great writer, why wouldn't she keep writing great books? FLYNT: Exactly. Which basically judges her by the standards of our own culture, which is once you've got a taste of fame and fortune, why in the world wouldn't you continue it? BLOCK: If you look closely at TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and the writing of Truman Capote, do you see anyway that Truman Capote could have written TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? FLYNT: No.

The voice of the characters in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is a totally different literary voice. Some have claimed that he's so brilliant that he could have simply assumed the voice of his good friend Harper Lee. I don't believe that for a minute. Writers simply don't assume another voice, another persona, another kind of literary style. Hers is very much the same style as her writing in the Crimson White eight years before this book is published. BLOCK: Wayne Flynt, have you met Harper Lee yourself? FLYNT: Yes. BLOCK: And you've talked to her about this? FLYNT: Yes. BLOCK: Can you tell us anything that she might have told you, without violating the confidence? FLYNT: Not really, because she's such a private person. And I think to ask her the question would be to do the very thing that so many people have done, which is to interrupt her privacy. And I think that she understands this as part of hype that goes along with the mythology of Truman Capote and Harper Lee. They're both a part of mythology.

BLOCK: Do you really think this letter from Truman Capote alluding to a book from Harper Lee that he has seen and that he thinks is quite good, do you think that will actually kill the rumor that he actually wrote the book? FLYNT: I think it will go along way towards that, although I think the most convincing evidence is really inferential evidence. Here's a person who was known for his enormous ego and for his banter and for his self-promotion. Here's a man who wanted desperately to win the National Book Award and wanted desperately to win the Pulitzer Prize and never won either one of them. And to assume, as jealous as he was of Harper Lee's success, he would not have claimed credit for this if he in fact done it, is simply too much for me to believe. So I don't know that we needed this letter, but I suppose it does put to rest some of the naysayers out there and some of the people who have claimed that she really is not a great literary talent. BLOCK: Well, Wayne Flynt, good to talk to you. Thanks so much. FLYNT: Thank you. BLOCK: Wayne Flynt is a retired Professor of History at Auburn University in Alabama.

The film CAPOTE about Truman Capote and Harper Lee is expected to pick up at least one gold statue at Sunday's Academy Awards. Copyright © 2006 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc. , an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. A dispute over who wrote Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird sequel re-emerges | Daily Mail Online comments They were childhood playmates, living next door to one another and going to the same primary school in the small Alabama town of Monroeville. Nellie Harper Lee and Truman Capote may have had little in common — he was a lisping sissy who liked to throw tantrums, she was a tough little tomboy — but they shared a childhood passion to tell stories. They would later be regarded as two of America’s greatest writers of the 20th century.

Avid readers, they would bash out stories on an old typewriter Lee’s father gave them and then act them out. They felt they had nothing in common with their schoolmates — they were ‘apart people’, as Capote put it. As adults, they would be just as close when they moved to New York, helping each other with their writing and even appearing — thinly disguised — in each other’s books. Scroll down for video Childhood playmates Harper Lee (left) and Truman Capote (right) went on to help each other with their writing in adult life - until a dramatic fall-out Later, however, they were to fall out spectacularly amid claims Capote was jealous of his old friend’s huge success. Lee, of course, is the author of the modern classic To Kill A Mockingbird. Yet she is almost as famous for having laid down her pen and never written another book. Now, however, the long and close friendship between Lee and Capote has come under the literary microscope once more with the bombshell announcement that the reclusive author did produce another book — and it will be published this year, 55 years after her first.

For Lee’s place as America’s First Lady of letters has been soured by persistent rumours that it was Capote and not her who was largely responsible for the original story about small-town Southern life in the Fifties and a heroic lawyer who tries to save a black man from a terrible injustice. Capote went on to have a long and glittering literary career, but Lee retreated into reclusive obscurity, stating she had said all she needed to say in print. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share For sceptics, it has always defied credibility that an unknown writer could produce a single, perfect novel and then pack away her typewriter for good and completely disappear from public life. Surely she would want to write more. Could her half-century of silence — not to mention her drastic falling out with Capote — have a more extraordinary explanation? The circumstances surrounding the sudden appearance of this new book, Go Set A Watchman, similarly almost defy belief. Set 20 years after her first book, but featuring the same characters and themes, Lee is said to have written it before To Kill A Mockingbird. However, she abandoned it after her editor advised her to tackle the story in a different way.

Lee said she thought she’d lost her work, but then a friend apparently found the manuscript last year attached to a typewritten copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. Capote is said to have become jealous of Lee's success from To Kill A Mockingbird, which was turned into a film (pictured) in 1962 Since Lee is now blind, deaf and confined to a wheelchair, and given that her publishers admit they have had no direct conversations with her about the new book, dealing only with her lawyer and agent, some are distinctly dubious about the sequel’s sudden emergence. Needless to say, its reclusive author, now 88 and living in a Monroeville retirement home, won’t be talking about it when it is published in July Another thing’s certain: it won’t contain any warm words from Truman Capote — who died in 1984 — such as the ones he wrote for the jacket sleeve of the first edition of To Kill A Mockingbird. He certainly owed her a favour back then.

Lee had followed him to New York to become a writer — working during the day as a reservations clerk for the British airline BOAC — when she broke off from her writing to help him in 1959. Capote had gone up to Kansas to research the notorious killing of a farming family, the Clutters, for his seminal crime story, In Cold Blood. Lee accompanied him, doing a lot of the research and helping the fey Capote make friends with the rough and ready locals. Somewhat uncharitably, say her friends, he simply credited her in the eventual book with ‘secretarial work’. Capote had used Lee as the inspiration for a character in his 1948 novel — Other Voices, Other Rooms — about his Alabama boyhood. When To Kill A Mockingbird came out in 1960, she returned the favour. Just as the book’s narrator, young Scout Finch, is clearly based on Lee and her heroic lawyer Atticus on her own father — also an attorney — Scout’s great friend and next-door neighbour, the precocious Dill Harris, was obviously inspired by Capote. He was delighted by this, pointing out the fact in letters to relatives.

The suggestion that he might have inspired more than just a character gradually gathered momentum over subsequent years. Sceptics have suggested that Capote may have written To Kill A Mockingbird because Lee did not write another novel - something that Go Set A Watchman could disprove Pearl Belle, a literary critic and book editor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, claimed that Capote had implied to her that he had written the book. In the Sixties, the pot was stirred by Capote’s father — the wonderfully named Archulus Persons [Capote took the surname of his Cuban step-father after his mother remarried]. Boasting about his famous son one day to a reporter from a local Alabama newspaper, he asked if the reporter knew Capote had also written ‘almost all of’ To Kill A Mockingbird. ‘To hear him tell it, Lee provided little more than an outline,’ said the reporter. ‘It was his genius son that made the novel sing, Persons claimed.’ Conspiracy theorists also pointed to the message that Capote wrote on the book’s first edition cover: ‘Someone rare has written this very fine first novel: a writer with the liveliest sense of life, and the warmest, most authentic sense of humour.’ It seemed such an odd tribute.

Could the famously wry but also deeply egotistical Capote have been referring to himself? The literary pair’s later estrangement had much to do with their drastically different responses to success. Capote’s pursuit of celebrity and his subsequent descent into drug and alcohol abuse are believed to have done much to convince Lee that she wanted nothing that fame offered. While he was boasting of an affair with Errol Flynn and being pals with Greta Garbo, Lee retreated behind a small circle of trusted friends and maintained a wall of public silence.

When Lee helped to promote the acclaimed 1962 film version of her book starring Gregory Peck, Capote sneered: ‘I think it very undignified for any serious artist to allow themselves to be exploited in this fashion.’ Lee told a neighbour: ‘Truman was a psychopath, honey.’ Her older sister, Alice, was more precise, claiming: ‘Truman became very jealous because Nellie Harper got a Pulitzer [Prize, for literary achievement] and he did not.’ Lee disappeared from the public eye shortly after the film, starring actor Gregory Peck, was released Lee has never addressed the claims that Capote wrote her book or drastically edited it, hinting that she stopped writing because she was completely overcome by the public adulation she received and didn’t want to repeat it. But her sister revealed the writer was offended by the Capote rumours. Alice Lee, who took over and ran their father’s Monroeville law practice until she was 100 — then died three years later — rarely spoke about her famous sibling. But she made an exception for questions about the novel’s authorship, angrily insisting in a 2002 interview that Capote was ‘absolutely not involved’ in the book.

She added: ‘That’s the biggest lie ever told.’ The literary world has always rallied behind Lee and rejected the theory out of hand. Charles Shields, Lee’s biographer, describes the rumours as ‘untrue and sexist’. Capote, he argues, ‘was a showy person, had a number of books under his belt and movies such as Breakfast At Tiffany’s based on his books. Along comes a young woman and all eyes are on her. But they were two geniuses that lived next door to each other.’ The strongest evidence against the conspiracy theory, they say, is that Capote never made the claim. Why would someone so notoriously bitchy and jealous not eventually claim ownership of one of the world’s best- selling books? It’s certainly true Capote never voiced such an allegation, though he did claim credit for encouraging a sometimes reluctant Lee to write. He may not have attacked the book, but he took increasingly nasty pot shots at Lee. Capote claimed she had a drinking problem that had derailed a second novel. Even if Capote really did believe he deserved the lion’s share of the credit for Lee’s masterpiece, sceptics counter that you need only look at the novel’s writing style to know she wrote it.

It is very similar, they say, to prose Lee had written years earlier for her student newspaper at the University of Alabama. Again, sceptics counter that Capote was so talented he could have easily adapted his style to ape hers. The Lee camp claimed it had debunked the murmurings once and for all eight years ago when a letter from Capote to his aunt emerged. Dated July 1959, a year before the novel was published, he told his aunt that Lee had ‘showed me as much of the book as she’d written and I liked it very much. She has real talent’. Some now say that what has been called the ‘Loch Ness monster of the literary world’ — the dispute over this revered book’s authorship — may finally be solved by this second Harper Lee novel. But will it? If Go Set A Watchman — being published unedited — is far inferior, does that really prove she must have had help with her later masterpiece? And if it turns out to be every bit as brilliant, couldn’t a counter argument simply run that Capote might have written both books? No doubt we will learn more later this year.

Perhaps the best approach is simply to be grateful that a story of such elegance and power as To Kill A Mockingbird was given to us at all. ATTICUS FINCH: THE GENTLE WISDOM OF A SPECIAL KIND OF HERO Atticus Finch, played by Peck in the 1962 version, was modelled on Harper Lee's father The hero of To Kill A Mockingbird is Atticus Finch, the courageous small-town lawyer who defends a black man wrongly accused of rape while being a stern but loving father to his children, one of whom, Scout, is the narrator. Modelled on Harper Lee’s father, his gentle words of wisdom — on parenthood and standing by your principles — have inspired generations of reader: ‘If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’ ‘Courage isn’t a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.’ ‘Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.’ ‘When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.’ ‘Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.’ ‘Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.’ To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide | GradeSaver To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide Buy Study Guide Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird during a very tense time racially in her home state of Alabama. The South was still segregated, forcing blacks to use separate facilities apart from those used by whites, in almost every aspect of society. The Civil Rights Movement began to pick up steam when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955.

Following her bold defiance, Marin Luther King, Jr., became the leader of the movement, and the issue began to gain serious national attention. Clearly, a prime subject of To Kill a Mockingbird, namely the injustice of racism and inequality in the American South, was highly relevant at the time of its publication. Interestingly, Harper Lee decided to set the novel in the Depression era of the 1930s. The main character, Scout, is based on Lee's own childhood, and Dill is most likely based on her childhood friend and neighbor, Truman Capote. By placing her novel in the 1930s, Lee provided her readers with a historical background for current events of the time, and in doing so she exposed the deeply rooted history of the civil rights struggle in the South. In addition to a biting analysis of race relations, To Kill A Mockingbird is also a story about Scout's maturation. Coming-of-age stories are also known as members of the genre Bildungsroman, which tends to depict main characters who take large steps in personal growth due to life lessons or specific trauma.

In Lee's novel, Scout Finch works to come to terms with the facts of her society, including social inequality, racial inequality, and the expectation that she act as a "proper Southern lady." Scout is a tomboy who resents efforts to alter her behavior in order to make her more socially accepted. In the 1930s, gender inequality also reigned, and women were not given equal rights. Women in the South were expected to be delicate and dainty, concepts that Scout abhors; and women were not allowed to serve on juries in Maycomb, according to the novel. Scout loves adventure and can punch as well as any boy in her class. She finds it hard to fit into the mold of a Southern lady. Miss Maudie is a strong role model for her in that Miss Maudie also defies some of their society's expectations and maintains her individuality as a Southern woman. But Scout eventually succumbs--in her own way--to social pressure. The novel's characters are forced to examine the world (or at least the town) in which they live.

Through observing their society and interacting with people such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley , they come to understand more about true bravery, cowardice, and humanity. Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format Sigelman, Katherine. C. Shelby and A. Kissel ed. "To Kill a Mockingbird Study Guide". GradeSaver, 29 July 2007 Web. To Kill a Mockingbird Essay - To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee - eNotes.com To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee (Born Nelle Harper Lee) American novelist. The following entry provides criticism on Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. See also Harper Lee Contemporary Literary Criticism. Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird has remained enormously popular since its publication in 1960. Recalling her experiences as a six-year-old from an adult perspective, Jean Louise Finch, nicknamed “Scout,” describes the circumstances involving her widowed father, Atticus, and his legal defense of Tom Robinson, a local black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.

In the three years surrounding the trial, Scout and her older brother, Jem, witness the unjust consequences of prejudice and hate while at the same time witnessing the values of courage and integrity through their father's example. Lee's first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird was published during the Civil Rights movement, and was hailed as an exposé of Southern racist society. The heroic character of Atticus Finch has been held up as a role model of moral virtue and impeccable character for lawyers to emulate. To Kill a Mockingbird has endured as a mainstay on high school and college reading lists. It was adapted to film in 1962 as a major motion picture starring Gregory Peck. Plot and Major Characters To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the small, rural town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the early 1930s. The character of Atticus Finch, Scout's father, was based on Lee's own father, a liberal Alabama lawyer and statesman who frequently defended African Americans within the racially prejudiced Southern legal system. Scout and her brother Jem are raised by their father and by Calpurnia, an African-American housekeeper who works for the family.

Scout and Jem meet and befriend seven-year-old Dill Harris, a boy who has arrived in Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. Lee has stated that the character of Dill is based on young Truman Capote, a well-known Southern writer and childhood friend. Together with Dill, Scout and Jem make a game of observing “Boo” Radley, a town recluse who has remained inside his house for fifteen years, trying to provoke him to come outside. Local myth holds that Boo eats live squirrels and prowls the streets at night, and the children's perception of him is colored by such tales. In the fall, Dill returns to his family in the North and Scout enters the first grade. Scout and Jem begin to discover mysterious objects, designed to intrigue children, hidden in a tree on the Radley property. When Tom Robinson, an African-American man, is accused of raping Mayella Ewell, Atticus is appointed as the defense attorney. Mayella and her shiftless father, Bob Ewell, live in abject poverty on the outskirts of town. The family is known as trouble and disliked by townspeople.

Despite this, Atticus's defense of Tom is unpopular in the white community, and Scout and Jem find themselves taunted at school due to their father's defense of a black man. Atticus consistently strives to instill moral values in his children, and hopes to counteract the influence of racial prejudice. The children view their father as frustratingly staid and bookish, until he is asked by the sheriff to shoot a rabid dog that is roaming the street. After Atticus kills the dog, Scout and Jem learn that their father is renowned as a deadly marksman in Maycomb County, but that he chooses not to use this skill, unless absolutely necessary. Scout's aunt, Alexandra, unexpectedly arrives to reside with the Finch family, announcing it is time someone reined in the children. She makes it her mission to counteract Atticus's liberal influence on the children and to instill ladylike virtues in the tomboyish Scout. The night before the trial of Tom Robinson is to begin, a group of local men threaten a lynching, but Scout inadvertently disrupts their plan when she recognizes the father of a schoolmate in the crowd of would-be lynchers.

When the trial begins, Atticus tries to protect his children from the anger and prejudice they would hear; however, Scout, Jem, and Dill sneak into the courtroom and sit in the balcony with the black community. Mayella and her father testify that Tom raped Mayella after he was asked onto their property to break up an old chifforobe into firewood. Atticus, however, proves Tom's innocence by demonstrating that while Mayella's face was beaten and bruised on her right side, Tom's left arm had been rendered completely useless by an earlier injury. Therefore, Atticus concludes, Tom could not possibly be the left-handed assailant who struck Mayella on the right side of her face. Atticus further suggests that it was Bob, Mayella's father, who beat her, and that, in fact, no rape occurred. Before the jury departs to deliberate, Atticus appeals to their sense of justice, imploring them not to allow racial prejudice to interfere with their deliberations. However, after two hours, the jury returns with a guilty verdict, sentencing Tom to be executed for rape. Later, Tom is shot to death during an attempt to escape from jail.

The following fall, Bob Ewell, incensed by Atticus's treatment of him during the trial, attacks Scout and Jem with a knife as they are walking home from a school Halloween pageant. Boo Radley, secretly observing the scene, intervenes in the scuffle, and Bob Ewell is stabbed and killed in the process. Called to the scene, the Sheriff and Atticus agree to not report Boo's involvement to the police, because a trial against him would likely be prejudiced. Intimately aware of issues of prejudice due to the Tom Robinson case, Atticus and the children agree to report that Ewell fell on his knife in the scuffle, sparing Boo the consequences of a legal trial. Scout realizes in retrospect that Boo has never been the threatening figure the children had imagined, and that he was responsible for leaving the mysterious gifts for them to find on his property. After walking Boo home, Scout stands on the porch of his house looking out, finally seeing the world through a wider perspective. Major Themes The central thematic concern of To Kill a Mockingbird addresses racial prejudice and social justice.

Atticus Finch represents a strongly principled, liberal perspective that runs contrary to the ignorance and prejudice of the white, Southern, small-town community in which he lives. Atticus is convinced that he must instill values of equality in his children, counteracting the racist influence. Lee makes use of several images and allegories throughout the novel to symbolize racial conflict. The children's attitudes about Boo, for example, represent in small scale the foundation of racial prejudice in fear and superstition. The rabid dog that threatens the town has been interpreted as symbolizing the menace of racism. Atticus's shooting of the rabid dog has been considered by many critics as a representation of his skills as an attorney in targeting the racial prejudices of the town. The central symbol of the novel, the mockingbird, further develops the theme of racial prejudice. For Christmas, Scout and Jem are given air rifles by their father, who warns that, although he considers it fair to shoot other birds, he views it a “sin to kill a mockingbird” because they “don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” The mockingbird represents victims of oppression in general, and the African-American community more specifically.

The unjust trial of Tom Robinson, in which the jury's racial prejudice condemns an innocent man, is symbolically characterized as the shooting of an innocent mockingbird. Toward the end of the novel, Scout realizes that submitting Boo to a trial would be akin to shooting a mockingbird—just as the prejudice against African Americans influences the trial of Tom Robinson, the town's prejudices against the white but mentally disabled Boo would likely impact a jury's view. The concept of justice is presented in To Kill a Mockingbird as an antidote to racial prejudice. As a strongly principled, liberal lawyer who defends a wrongly accused black man, Atticus represents a role model for moral and legal justice. Atticus explains to Scout that while he believes the American justice system to be without prejudice, the individuals who sit on the jury often harbor bias, which can taint the workings of the system. Throughout the majority of the novel, Atticus retains his faith in the system, but he ultimately loses in his legal defense of Tom. As a result of this experience, Atticus expresses a certain disillusionment when, at the conclusion of the book, he agrees to conceal Boo's culpability in the killing of Ewell, recognizing that Boo would be stereotyped by his peers.

Atticus decides to act based on his own principles of justice in the end, rather than rely on a legal system that may be fallible. To Kill a Mockingbird also can be read as a coming-of-age story featuring a young girl growing up in the South and experiencing moral awakenings. Narrated from Scout's point-of-view, the novel demonstrates the now-adult narrator's hindsight perspective on the growth of her identity and outlook on life. In developing a more mature sensibility, the tomboyish Scout challenges the forces attempting to socialize her into a prescribed gender role as a Southern lady. Aunt Alexandra tries to subtly and not-so subtly push Scout into a traditional gender role—a role that often runs counter to her father's values and her own natural inclinations. However, as events around the trial become ugly, Scout realizes the value of some of the traditions Alexandra is trying to show her and decides she, too, can be a “lady.” To Kill a Mockingbird explores themes of heroism and the idea of role models as well. Lee has stated that the novel was essentially a long love letter to her father, whom she idolized as a man with deeply held moral convictions.

Atticus is clearly the hero of the novel, and functions as a role model for his children. Early in the story, the children regard their father as weak and ineffective because he does not conform to several conventional standards of Southern masculinity. They eventually realize that Atticus possesses not only skill with a rifle, but also moral courage, intelligence, and humor, and they come to regard him as a hero in his own right. Critical Reception Since its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird has been enormously popular with the reading public, has sold millions of copies, and has never gone out of print. The initial critical response to Lee's novel was mixed. Many reviewers lauded the book as a poignant and insightful exposé of racism in the South, and a powerful rendering of modern heroism. Others, however, found fault with Lee's use of narrative voice, asserting that she fails to effectively integrate the voice of the adult Scout with the childish perspective of the young girl who narrates much of the novel. Critical reception of the book has primarily centered around its messages concerning issues of race and justice.

Joseph Crespino observed, “In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism.” Proponents of the novel have championed its usefulness as a teaching tool in high school and college curricula for examining issues of racism and justice. Atticus has been held up by law professors and others as an ideal role model of sound moral character and strong ethical principles. As Steven Lubet remarked, “No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession than the hero of Harper's Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. For nearly four decades, the name of Atticus Finch has been invoked to defend and inspire lawyers, to rebut lawyer jokes, and to justify (and fine-tune) the adversary system.” Since the 1960s, as the discourse around race and justice in America has become more complex and multi-faceted, To Kill a Mockingbird has come under strong criticism for the fundamental values it puts forth. The novel has been criticized for promoting a white paternalistic attitude toward the African-American community.

Such critics hold that the novel's central image of the mockingbird as a symbol for African Americans ultimately represents the African-American community as a passive body in need of a heroic white male to rescue them from racial prejudice. Isaac Saney remarked, “Perhaps the most egregious characteristic of the novel is the denial of the historical agency of Black people. They are robbed of their roles as subjects of history, reduced to mere objects who are passive hapless victims; mere spectators and bystanders in the struggle against their own oppression and exploitation. … The novel and its supporters deny that Black people have been the central actors in their movement for liberation and justice.” The status of Atticus Finch as a role model for lawyers has also come under attack in recent years. These critics have scrutinized Atticus from the perspective of legal ethics and moral philosophy, and analyzed his characters' underlying values in relation to race, class, and gender. As Monroe Freedman argued, “Finch never attempts to change the racism and sexism that permeates the life of Maycomb […] On the contrary, he lives his own life as the passive participant in that pervasive injustice. And that is not my idea of a role model for young lawyers.” Yet the character of Atticus continues to have avid defenders.

Ann Althouse asserted, “For those entering the legal profession, who commonly worry that they will lose themselves in an overbearing and tainted alien culture, Atticus is a model of integrity.” Althouse concluded, “Atticus Finch is an example: a man who has found a way to live and work as a good person in a deeply flawed society.” Start Free Trial Start your free trial with eNotes to access more than 30,000 study guides. Get help with any book.

Question: Who wrote the novel To Kill a Mocking-bird ?
Answer: HARPER LEE