“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is a famous work of literature by Harper Lee. S
he claimed that it was meant to be ‘a simple love story’ but upon reading it, it is clear that its storyline is actually way more than just that
.
The story told from the point of view of Jean Louise Finch or ‘Scout’, a young girl from Maycomb County, who is the protagonist of the novel. We watch her grow and mature, and we see how her opinions change on certain matters and conflicts in the book since the story is told over the course of two years. Jean’s older brother Jem, who is four years older than her, guides her through the adventures and often gets them into trouble. Every summer, their friend ‘Dill’ joins them and gives them ideas on how to torment Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley, a neighbour the people of Maycomb have not seen the house for years, causing rumours and stories to circulate about him. Atticus, Scout and Jem’s father, plays quite a critical role in the story, teaching them the morals they will later use- as well as his famous quote, ‘It’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird’, which foreshadows one of the greatest events in the novel.
Set in Maycomb County, Alabama, from the summer of 1935 to 1955, the story tackles some of the world’s greatest issues during that era: racism and inequality. Because the story is told from the eyes of six-year-old Scout, it also handles the difficulties of growing up, seeing how the world truly is and describes the injustices a kid would never understand, such as seeing the flaws of the law and how innocent people can still be deemed ‘guilty’.
Scout also faces a lot of hardship from the women of Maycomb, as her behaviour was not considered ‘ladylike’- and as Jem grew older, he began to give her a hard time for it too; this causes Scout to get in trouble quite often so she also starts learning lessons on how the world behaves and reacts to individuals’ actions. One of the book’s biggest plot points, the event that started opening Scout’s eye, was when her father Atticus was handed to be a lawyer for the case of Tom Robinson, a man of colour who was falsely accused of a serious crime by the Ewells. This causes a lot of tension in the Maycomb county, which was considered a quiet, peaceful place. One of the plots that extend from the beginning to the end was the ‘Boo’ Radley story and how Scout, Jem and Dill kept trying to torment him enough to make him get out of the Radley house for the first time in years. Eventually, Scout comes to realize that ‘Boo’ is not just some crazy man who hasn’t left the house in years but in fact her hero, or a more complex character who she only understands as the story unfolds.
In my opinion, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is one of the greatest books I have ever read. Its storyline is more complex than others despite it seeming like a shallow story at the start- and as different paths are created, it is all tied back together at the end. Examples are how everything that happened to Scout across those two years taught her one a very important lesson. Boo didn’t stay inside the house because he was mad, but because he had no other choice.
The morals are blurred, you can’t categorise them into ‘this is what’s right’ and ‘this is what’s wrong’. You can’t gather all the events and give a one-sentence moral or objective to it. It shows the complexity that goes behind a human’s daily life and how one issue can have many answers, how people will not agree, how both sides can be proven right and wrong and how in some cases, like that of Boo’s, being unfair works out for the best.
I highly recommend this book- and although it isn’t any of the most unique and interesting realities, its story makes it an interesting book to read. It does not have any highly fictional traits and can easily be mistaken for a person’s actual life back then, but the simplicity of the characters and setting contrasts with its intricate series of events creates one of the most famous pieces of literature of all time.
