“‘…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'” (105).
To Kill A Mockingbird is a gentle and compassionate novel which confronts a very difficult subject matter –the issue of racism in America. As I re-read this classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for the first time in my adult life, the national press was once again afire with the issue of racism. Several widely publicized incidents of police violence against black Americans spawned widespread protests, the scale of which was unparalleled since the 1960s. This has been a time of reflection for a great many people across our nation. Similarly, when To Kill A Mockingbird was published, the United States was on the cusp of the Civil Rights movement: it was released shortly after the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts (1955-1956), among a myriad of other instances of civil disobedience against racial discrimination. Like other great books of the Western canon, such as Aeschylus’s Oresteia or Plato’s Apology of Socrates, To Kill A Mockingbird uses the motif of a courtroom drama to address this difficult question of injustice, however unlike other great works of literature, To Kill A Mockingbird uniquely delivers the verdict through the innocent eyes of children.
To Kill A Mockingbird is a novel told in two parts. Part I patiently sets the scene. While reading, I imagined hearing the story recounted by the novel’s protagonist, Scout, reminiscing about the old days while gently rocking back and forth on her Alabama porch, perhaps sipping a mint julep. Harper Lee’s beautiful cadence invites us into the fictional small town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression in the early ’30s. It is a dusty, rural town in Southern Alabama based on Lee’s own hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. In a series of vignettes spanning several years in the life of six-year old Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, the first half of the book offers reflections on various misadventures with her brother, Jeremy “Jem” (whose character is based on Harper Lee’s older brother, Edwin). Also we meet their family friend, Dill, who visits Maycomb during the summers (Dill is loosely based on Harper Lee’s childhood friend and fellow author, Truman Capote).
The three children: Scout, Jem, and Dill play games together in the neighborhood, especially at the end of the street where a dilapidated house owned by the Radley family stands. The Radley’s son, colloquially known as “Boo Radley,” lives inside the house in complete isolation from the outside world. The children find him fascinating and mysterious. One night, the children narrowly escape from the Radley home in a dangerous effort to catch a glimpse of Boo Radley, and in another instance the children find toys and bubblegum hidden inside a nearby tree knot. Throughout To Kill A Mockingbird, we also meet the neighborhood ladies: Miss Maudie, Miss Stephanie Crawford, and Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose –an aging widow who suffers from a morphine addiction, but her addiction is unwittingly overcome shortly before her death with a little help from Jem and Scout. In another vignette, the children travel with their black housemaid, Calpurnia (who shares a name with Julius Caesar’s wife), as they head to her church and learn about the differences between white and black people in Alabama. Dill and Scout promise to get married one day, while Jem rapidly matures hoping to earn the respect of his father, Atticus.
As the novel progresses, we become aware of a controversy that has afflicted Maycomb. The Ewells, a poor white family led by drunken patriarch named Bob Ewell, have publicly accused a black man named Tom Robinson of raping their daughter, Mayella Ewell. The controversy is explicitly racial in nature and it sparks gossip and controversy. The local magistrate, Judge Taylor, appoints Atticus Finch to defend Tom Robinson in the criminal case –a subtle indication of the judge’s sympathy for the defendant. Many in town begin to publicly scorn Atticus and his children for defending a black man. At one point, a lynch mob visits Tom Robinson’s prison with plans to kill him, but they are stopped when Jem and Scout intervene. Once again, we are reminded that the innocence of children has a pacifying effect on people. It saves Tom Robinson (and also Atticus) from a potentially violent scenario.
“Scout… every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess. You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let ’em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change” (76).
Part II of To Kill A Mockingbird focuses on the trial of Tom Robinson. The trial takes place on a hot summer day. The children sit within the upper balcony alongside all the black citizens and they watch their father cross-examine the witnesses, impressed by his demeanor and temperament. Atticus is a good man who always strives to do the right thing. He serves as a source of moral strength and courage throughout the novel. But despite having no evidence to convict Tom Robinson –and even with evidence presented to exonerate him (namely Tom Robinson’s defective left arm)– the jury still unanimously finds Tom guilty and the trial ends in a tragic loss, a gross miscarriage of justice.
In the end, Bob Ewell vows vengeance on Atticus for defending Tom Robinson. He dramatically attacks Scout and Jem in a particularly terrifying scene on Halloween night. During the course of their tussle, an unknown assailant comes to their rescue from out of the darkness. Bob Ewell winds up dead with a knife stuck in him, and Jem is carried away with a broken arm. We soon discover that their anonymous savior was none other than Arthur “Boo” Radley, a pale-faced, child-like man. It was actually he who left all the gifts for the children inside the tree many years ago. He has apparently been a quiet friend and protector of the children all these years from his self-imposed exile. At the Finch house, a small crowd gathers at Jem’s bedside until Boo Radley gently whispers to Scout, asking to be walked home. When they arrive back at his old, dilapidated house, Boo Radley quickly enters, shuts the door, and Scout never sees him again. She reflects on the life of Boo Radley, contrasting him with the children who play outside in the neighborhood. She remembers the words Atticus once said:
“…you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them” (279).
In To Kill A Mockingbird, the serious subjects of racism, rape, and injustice are explored in tandem through the light-hearted and innocent perspectives of children. All three children, Scout, Jem, and Dill, are not fully aware of the gravity of the situation unfolding around them, but by inviting readers to enter into the perspective of blameless children, Harper Lee asks us to look beyond our own personal prejudices, find our own place of innocence, recall our childhood, and in doing so, to seek out the better angels of our nature. Both the sense of youthful purity and also the burden of adult severity are harmonized together within the character of Arthur “Boo” Radley, who is an adult and yet he also lives like a child-like recluse. At first, he is frightening and mysterious, but by the end of the story, he becomes a quiet hero. The difference is that we come to understand him, rather than fear him. The theme of childlike virtue is alluded to in the novel’s title –Mockingbirds are referenced perhaps only once or twice in the novel, but they are shown to be respected, deeply revered creatures because they are harmless. They merely exist to help make the world a more beautiful place since mockingbirds offer songs for other people to enjoy. And according to Atticus it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, in other words, it is a sin to destroy innocence in the world:
“Atticus said to Jem one day, ‘I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird'” (90).
The dedication at the outset of this novel reads to: “Mr. Lee and Alice in consideration of Love & Affection” and it also features an epigraph from English essayist and poet Charles Lamb which reads: “Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”
To Kill A Mockingbird Controversies
As with many other Pulitzer-Prize winning novels, like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (read my reflections on the novel here) or Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind (read my reflections on the novel here), Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird was ensconced in controversy upon its release. It was criticized by many as immoral or obscene for its colorful use of racial epithets and certain examples of controversial content. Many schools boards, particularly in the American south, attempted to ban the book –most notoriously in Hanover County, VA– until public outcry eventually reversed the decision. Harper Lee, herself, wrote a letter to the school board expressing disappointment at their decision (she questioned whether or not any of the board members could, in fact, read). Over the years since its publication there have been numerous attempts to ban To Kill A Mockingbird from American libraries. In 2016, To Kill A Mockingbird, along with Huckleberry Finn, was removed from a school library in Virginia, and in 2017 a school board in Mississippi removed To Kill A Mockingbird from its longstanding position in the elementary school’s curriculum. Thankfully, advocates of free speech and free inquiry have continued to push back against censorship in American schools and libraries. Recently, To Kill A Mockingbird won PBS’s “Great American Read” for favorite American novel by the general public.
To Kill A Mockingbird has also been criticized for presenting a “white savior” narrative –a claim that Atticus Finch’s character serves as a mere trope, an idolized purveyor of white liberalism in its desire to pat itself on the back for helping those who are underprivileged. I hesitate to grant this perspective too much serious analysis. Further criticism came after the immensely controversial publication of Go Set A Watchman in 2015, which was pitched to be a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, however further research revealed it to be an early draft of To Kill A Mockingbird and it portrayed a wildly different of Atticus, as essentially a deeply flawed segregationist who now disappoints his grown-up daughter. At the time of publication, Harper Lee was 89-years-old, her literary executor (her sister Alice) had just passed away, and somehow HarperCollins was suddenly granted permission to publish the new novel, a book that Harper Lee had fiercely resisted publishing for many decades. Was Harper Lee capable of granting consent for the publication of Go Set A Watchman? To many readers, it seemed that HarperCollins had exploited an elderly woman in exchange for an instant bestseller. At any rate, in my own view, Atticus deserves an honored place in the pantheon of American literary heroes. He is a flawed man to be sure, but his moral fortitude remains uniquely admirable to Americans of all walks of life.
On the 1961 Pulitzer Prize Decision
For the Pulitzer Prize decision in 1961 there were only two members of the Fiction Jury: John Barkham and Irita Van Doren. To Kill A Mockingbird was selected over other better-known novelists like Set This House On Fire by William Styron (who would later win a Pulitzer for The Confessions of Nat Turner) and Rabbit, Run by John Updike (who would later become a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for installments in the Rabbit Engstrom series, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest). The second choice by the jury was The Child Buyer by John Hersey. They also praised John Knowles’ A Separate Peace and Henry Beetle Hough’s Mutatis Mutandis.
- John Barkham (1908-1998) was originally born in South Africa on an ostrich farm, before he became American historical book reviewer, focusing primarily on books about Africa. According to his obituary in The New York Times, in his heyday, Mr. Barkham could deliver a stream of 4-6 book reviews per week. He would typically sit back in his Eames leather reading chair at 3pm, and once finished reading, he would handwrite his review of the book before typing it up again on his typewriter. His writing appeared in numerous publications including TIME, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Post and others. Mr. Barkham served on many Pulitzer juries in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, and Biography over a period of approximately 20 years.
- Irita Van Doren (1891-1966) was one of the leading literary lights in New York City for more than 40 years. She began her career on the editorial staff at The Nation in 1919 before moving to The New York Herald Tribune Books for some 35 years, where she worked under editor Stuart P. Sherman (who served as a Pulitzer Prize Juror in 1920s). When he passed away in 1926, Mrs. Van Doren succeeded him as editor of The Herald Tribune, and she quickly “won respect for her editorial judgement, for her punctuality in printing book news and reviews and for her policy of representing all shades of taste and opinion in books and reviewers.” For example, it was she who selected Lewis Gannett as the paper’s long-serving daily book critic (he also served as a Pulitzer Prize Juror in the 1940s). She was previously married to Carl Van Doren from 1912-1935 (he won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Ben Franklin in 1939). In her later years, Mrs. Van Doren ran in many high-brow literary circles while developing a deep love of Southern literature (perhaps owing to her family lineage, being the granddaughter of a Confederate General). She led a storied life that apparently included a secret romantic affair with Wendell Wilkie, Republican presidential nominee in 1940.
Who is Harper Lee?
Nelle Harper Lee (1926-2016) published only two novels during her lifetime: To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) and Go Set A Watchman (2015). Her birth name “Nelle” was her grandmother’s name spelled backwards. She chose “Harper Lee” as her nom de plume because she was afraid of being misidentified as “Nellie.”
She was born in Monroeville, Alabama, the youngest of four children. Growing up, she became close friends with Truman Capote (he was actually the basis for the character “Dill” in To Kill A Mockingbird, and in return Truman Capote based a character in his first novel on Harper Lee). She studied law at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, but much to her father’s chagrin, she dropped out one semester before graduating. Harper Lee was generally considered the bohemian of the family while her older sister, Alice, pursued a legal career.
In 1949, Harper Lee moved to New York City to become a writer while working various odd-jobs, such as an airline reservation agent or a bookstore clerk. In her spare time she wrote stories. She moved into a townhouse at 50th East Street and her friends offered a years worth of wages to free up her time to write. She lived near her old friend Truman Capote, and traveled with him to Kansas while researching the story of a small town murder that eventually turned into his magnum opus, In Cold Blood. Eventually, Harper Lee grew apart from Truman Capote as his lifestyle became more flamboyant and hers drew further inward. By 1957, Harper Lee submitted a manuscript for publication entitled Go Set A Watchman, but it was not entirely ready so she re-worked it for several years and eventually retitled it To Kill A Mockingbird. It was a long and grueling process of editing and re-editing (at one point a tearful Lee apparently tossed her manuscript out a second story window into the snow before her editor phoned her up and calmly reassured her of the process). Harper Lee’s editor was Therese “Tay” von Hohoff of the publishing house, J. B. Lippincott (later acquired by HarperCollins).
When To Kill A Mockingbird was finally published it was an extraordinary success. Lee’s celebrity rapidly grew out of control and she worked hard to protect her anonymity. Harper Lee’s sister, Alice, became her attorney. They lived together, both unmarried, and filed for an unlisted telephone number to prevent the growing requests for interviews (Harper Lee denied nearly every interview). She preferred to live a private life. However, it is not fair to call her a recluse. Lee merely enjoyed her quiet and frugal existence far away from the spotlight. She was content to view herself as the Jane Austen of the American South, as well as a documentarian of the American small town -a vanishing way of life in contemporary society.
When Universal Pictures purchased the movie rights to her novel, Harper Lee helped with the script and casting for the film. During the process she grew particularly close with Gregory Peck, whose granddaughter was later named in honor of Harper Lee. The film was released in 1962 to great acclaim.
Harper Lee lived a lengthy and mostly anonymous life, all while collecting numerous awards over the decades for To Kill A Mockingbird, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of the Arts, and numerous literary and collegiate merits. She spent a few months every year in New York, but most of her life was happily spent in Monroeville. She lived with her sister, Alice, and together they made weekly trips to David’s Catfish Cabin for seafood. Harper Lee had many friends and was apparently a delightfully funny person.
A sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird was controversially published in 2015 entitled Go Set a Watchman. Apparently the novel tells the story of Scout twenty years later as she returns to Maycomb from New York only to find Atticus an older man who has grown more bigoted and disappointing (he expresses certain sympathies for the Ku Klux Klan). Much of the novel was an early draft of To Kill A Mockingbird that was mysteriously discovered by publishers. Upon its publication there was a media firestorm. HarperCollins was criticized for allegedly taking advantage of Harper Lee, an 89 year-old woman with impaired eyesight and hearing loss. The decision to publish went against her many decades of resistance. To make matters worse, Harper Lee’s sister, Alice, who was her sole caregiver and attorney, died shortly before HarperCollins was granted permission to publish the book.
Harper Lee died in her sleep on February 19, 2016 in Monroeville, Alabama at age 89. She never married and she never had any children.
Film Adaptation:
- To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
- Director: Robert Mulligan
- Starring: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Ruth White, Paul Fix, Brock Peters, Frank Overton, James Anderson
Literary Context in 1960-1961
- Nobel Prize for Literature (1960): awarded to French poet Saint-John Perse “for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry, which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time.”
- National Book Award (1961): The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter (a past Pulitzer Prize-winning author).
- Per Publishers Weekly, the top bestselling novel in 1960 was Advise and Consent by Allen Drury. Also on the list was Hawaii by James A. Michener.
- Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss was published in the United States.
- Dalton Trumbo –one of the Hollywood Ten– received full screenwriting credit for his work on the films Spartacus and Exodus.
- Richard Wright delivers a polemical lecture entitled “The Situation of the Black Artist and Intellectual in the United States”, to students and members of the American Church in Paris, a few weeks before his death in the city from heart attack aged 52.
- American novelist Norman Mailer stabbed his wife, artist Adele Morales.
- John Barth publishes The Sot-Weed Factor.
- Charles Beaumont published Night Ride and Other Journeys.
- Agatha Christie published The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.
- Ian Fleming published his first collection of James Bond short stories entitled For Your Eyes Only.
- Scott O’Dell published Island of the Blue Dolphins.
- John Updike published Rabbit, Run.
Did The Right Book Win?
It goes without saying that Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is an American classic and the Pulitzer Prize undoubtedly made the right decision with its selection in 1961.
Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird. Warner Books, December, 1982 (originally published in 1960).
Thank you for this article which reminds me how there is always so much more to learn about all our most treasured stories. The quite controversial sequel novel is a major shocker. But the most loyal fans, as with fans of many classics despite the sequel curse of this century, will never let that damage the timelessly best influences of To Kill A Mockingbird and especially Atticus Finch.