Just Finished Reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

When, after more than fifty intervening years before author Harper Lee published Go Set a Watchman, the sequel to her famous To Kill a Mockingbird, I became aware of just how embedded within the American psyche the original story had become, I finally got around to reading it for myself, never having seen the movie adaptation starring Gregory Peck.  Worthy of an almost universal reading assignment in high school English classes, somehow I had avoided such an assignment during my tenure as a student in the early 1970s...

To Kill a Mockingbird is told in the first person by the character of Jean-Louise "Scout" Finch, a young girl who lives with her widowed attorney father Atticus and her older brother Jem in Maycomb, Alabama, a small town distant from any big city.  It is the mid-1930s and Scout is entering a most memorable period in her life.  After all, she's just started the first grade!  But upon encountering her teacher for the first time, she discovers that practically everything she says is frowned upon in the classroom...even the fact that at six years of age she can already read quite well...thanks to the teaching of Calpurnia, the family's long-time cook.  In the meantime, her friend Dill, who keeps getting passed off from one family to another, often finds himself living with his Aunt Rachel in Maycomb.  Together with Jem, the three go on dares to the forbidden house in town where the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley lives in complete seclusion.  Who is this mysterious figure and how important is he in determining the outcome of the story?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out...

While the childhood dramas and adventures of Scout's life are going on, she discovers that her father Atticus (whom the children always address by his first name) is weighted down by a case he is working on.  Atticus has been appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a young black man accused of raping a white woman.  To Atticus, the accusation is false, but he realizes that in defending Tom, he is fighting an uphill battle against the prejudiced hearts of the adult white population...especially those of the all-white jury that will determine the verdict.  Also, the anger at Atticus for defending a black man spills over into the lives of his own children, who are taunted with racial epithets by other kids...and even adults who should have known better...

To Kill a Mockingbird is a story told on different levels.  On one level, it is something of an adventure story of a spunky little girl in a small southern town of the thirties.  On another, it is story of that child's awakening to the complex and often ugly world of adult society, complete with its bigotry and injustice...as well as the fact that pigeonholing people by race or family obscures and diminishes their value and significance as individuals.  And on still another level, in a more general sense, it is a lesson on how anyone, no matter how "good" of a life they lead, can have areas in their heart full of darkness, ignorance, and hate... 

As for the book's title, yes, Harper Lee does get around to explaining its meaning...