Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee was born on 28 April 1926, in Monroeville, southwest Alabama, USA. She was the youngest child of Amasa Coleman Lee and Francis Finch Lee’s four children. Lee’s father was a former newspaper editor and proprietor, who had also served as a State Senator, and practised as a lawyer in Monroeville.

Harper Lee attended a number of colleges, including Huntington College from 1944-1945 and the University of Alabama from 1945-1949, studying law. In 1950 she attended Oxford University, England, for one year on an exchange. Six months before the end of her studies, Lee decided to attempt to pursue a literary career in New York.

During her time in New York, Lee worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways. However, Lee gave up her position with the air lines in order to devote more time to her writing.

In 1959 Lee travelled to Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for Truman Capote when working on his classical, non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood (1966).

Despite slavery ending a century before the 1960 publication of To Kill a Mocking Bird, African Americans were still denied many of their basic rights at the time of Lee writing the novel. The American Civil Rights Movement had started taking place in the 1950s and this – along with the impact of the Great Depression of 1929-33 – were the influences that significantly impacted on Lee and the writing of her enduring novel concerning issues of social justice and prejudice.

The central theme of To Kill a Mockingbird may be described as a plea for tolerance and for an acceptance of differences in society at large. Prejudice, Lee suggests, is based on ignorance and fear. In contrast, a true understanding of one’s fellow human beings comes from empathy and compassion. The novel deals with not only racial prejudice, but also with prejudice against anyone who does not conform to society’s so called conventions. Lee constantly suggests the need to see people fully, to strive to understand their complexities, and not to generalize about them. This is clearly demonstrated when Atticus says to Scout, “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.” (page 35).

A major theme that Lee emphasizes in the novel is that the worst cruelty of all is to harm those who are harmless, vulnerable or who bring joy to a community (i.e. the mockingbird.) Thus Lee’s over-arching message in To Kill a Mockingbird is that brutality to the vulnerable is the greatest sin of all. If one sees all people as individuals, then blind prejudice becomes impossible to sustain. When Scout addresses the lynch mob by name and refers to their personal problems she causes the mob to disperse. One must not judge by external factors but must see people in full.

In 1957 Lee submitted the manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird to the J. B. Lippincott Company. The editor urged her to re-write her novel which, he said, comprised a series of short-stories strung together. With the editor’s assistance over the next two and a half years, Lee reworked the manuscript which was finally published in the form we know it today.

Published in 1960, when she was 34, To Kill a Mockingbird, was Lee’s first and only novel. The novel became an instant success and was so well received that it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. In 1962 the novel was adapted for the screen. Despite this accolade, Lee did not pursue her literary career but did work on a second novel for some years afterwards.

In 1961 Lee had two short articles published in Vogue and McCall’s and in 1966 Lee was one of two people named by President Johnson to the National Council of Arts. Lee remains an enigma, refusing interviews and returning the Monroeville, from New York, to live with her sister. In 2007 Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George Bush.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a rare novel in that it has never been out of print since its publication in 1960. Lee was asked, upon the 35th anniversary of the book, to write an introduction for the 35th anniversary edition. She declined saying.... “It still says what it has to stay; it has managed to survive the years without a preamble. Please spare ‘Mockingbird’ an introduction.” Very occasionally Lee is seen out with her sister lunching at a local restaurant in Monroeville, but always she declines to answer questions and locals refuse to talk about her.

The genre of Lee’s one and only, best seller novel may be described as a “coming-of-age”, social, courtroom and southern drama. One might even describe it as approaching “protest” literature - much like Beverly Naidoo’s, The Other Side of Truth, and Nadine Gordimer’s writings on apartheid South Africa.

In this genre, Lee uses the courtroom to comment on the injustice and racism in society. Lee’s style of writing suggests the quality of a mock memoir. She writes as a narrator in the first person and yet does not allow the adult narrator to be too intrusive at any point in the story. This quality we see at the start of the novel, when Lee describes Maycomb County and later in the trial of Tom Robinson, when she recalls, with child-like clarity, the milestones of both her formative years in Maycomb and the trial. On both of these occasions the world is recalled through the memories of a child and yet the adult perspective is not allowed to intrude too much on those recollections.

Many aspects of the story line of To Kill a Mockingbird are drawn from Harper Lee’s own life. The character of Scout is autobiographical. Finch was Lee’s mother’s maiden name and the character of Dill was based on Truman Capote, Lee’s unconventional and highly imaginative childhood friend and neighbour. The trial itself was based around the infamous “Scottboro Trial” in which a black man was also unjustly charged of raping a white girl.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, the six-year-old narrator, Scout Finch, lives with her older brother, Jem, and their widowed father, lawyer, Atticus Finch. Atticus defends a local black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a poor white girl. Atticus Finch faces a number of challenges from the disapproving, narrow minded and prejudicial society in which he lives, once he agrees to defend Tom Robinson on the trumped-up rape charge.

While this scenario begins to unfold, Jem and Scout Finch, meet a new friend, seven-year old Dill, and together they become interested in their reclusive neighbour, “Boo” Radley. Many humorous and sad events unfold as a result of which Scout and Jem learn a number of lessons concerning good and evil, compassion and justice and courage. As the narration continues, the reader learns that Scout will never become a racist or kill a mockingbird – a symbol of the most vulnerable members of society.

The novel comprises two plots. The first is that of the deranged and harmless “Boo” Radley, and the second concerns Tom Robinson and his conviction for a crime he did not commit. The innocent Tom, after sentencing, tries to escape and is shot dead. Mayella Ewell’s father, Bob Ewell, attacks Scout and Jem as punishment for Atticus exposing him as the liar he is in court. Ulitmately, “Boo” Radley saves the day and the children regret their earlier tormenting of “Boo”, as well as the fact that they have never thanked him for the gifts he has left for them in the tree.

As the novel unfolds, the reader discovers that Atticus and Calpurnia, the black cook, are at the moral centre of the book. They do not share society’s prejudices and are portrayed as pillars of society. Children are born with an instinctive sense of justice, Lee suggests, and it is the socialization process that results in children absorbing the prejudices of their society. Tom Robinson ultimately becomes the novel’s scapegoat for society’s prejudices and violence.

Forty years after the publishing of To Kill a Mockingbird, the style of Lee’s writing remains as distinctive as ever. To Kill a Mockingbird would best be described as a “bildungsroman” novel. In other words, the novel is concerned with a character’s (i.e. Scout) formative years and development. The direct translation of this German word is an “education novel”. To Kill a Mockingbird may also be said to encompass elements of the gothic novel in the form of “Boo” Radley’s “haunted” house. Despite the children’s perception of the Radley’s “haunted” house, “Boo” transpires not to be a gothic villain but rather a saintly character who saves the children from the villainous Bob Ewell.

Harper Lee may be said to have influenced other writers who have subsequently looked at court cases as a means of commenting on the delicate issue of racism and social injustice in their respective societies. Lee has influenced many other writers through her “Mockingbird” appeal for liberal thinking and her plea that society not judge or brutalise its members by virtue of their outer appearance or their unconventional differences. Instead she asks that society judge a person by the content of their character and by their deeds.

The 1962 screen version of To Kill a Mockingbird has had an enduring influence on the making of many subsequent movies concerning injustice and racism. One of the more memorable movies being the 1988 movie, Mississippi Burning. In my opinion, authors such as Toni Morrison and Joyce Carole-Oates may well have been influenced by Harper Lee’s writing legacy.

In conclusion, if one combines the reading of the novel with the autobiographical information obtained in the background research, it is possible to conclude that the character of Harper Lee may be described as being herself highly intelligent, extra-ordinarily unconventional, independent and highly-spirited much like Scout. Lee’s character may also be described as being imaginative, inquisitive and challenging, as we see through the court-room questioning on the part of the child, Scout.

Through-out this semi-autobiographical novel, Lee evidences a highly developed sense of social justice and responsibility as well as an over-riding sense of compassion towards the weakest members of society. We can therefore conclude that the character of Lee must also be concerned with that which is morally just and right in real life. Her words on the novel...”It has never been out of print...It says what it has to say...” perhaps best encapsulate the essence of the novel and the character of its author.