Harper Lee's coming-of-age tale, To Kill a Mockingbird, is set in the Deep South, and is a searing portrayal of race and prejudice told through the eyes of a little girl. Filled with atmospheric evocations of life in the 1930s and a moral and caring sensibility, To Kill a Mockingbird is both a brilliant rendering of a specific time and place as well as a universal tale of how understanding can triumph over old and evil mindsets. Most of all, To Kill a Mockingbird is a modern-day morality tale of how prejudice must be met, fought and overcome--no matter where it is present or how difficult that task might seem.HarperCollins
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it. To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story, by a young Alabama woman, claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
I met Atticus Finch the year my father died. My father was kind, soft-spoken, and courteous. Like Atticus, “he did not do the things our schoolmates’ fathers did: he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish, or drink or smoke. He sat in the living room and read.”
While he was alive, I wished my father more heroic, but I was a boy with a shallow understanding of courage. Worst of all, my father told self-effacing stories like the one about a drunken Marine who sneered at him. “I bet I could kick your ASS!” My father’s reply: “I bet, too, you could!” My dad defused him, bought him coffee, thanked him for his service, and the Marine left peacefully. I was not impressed. But then, I read about Bob Ewell spitting in Atticus’ face, and Atticus calmly wiping the spittle and walking away. Like Saul of Tarsus, the scales fell from my eyes. I was blind, but then I saw.
One of the themes that resonated with me was the way Jem's appreciation of his father grows. Jem proclaims, “Atticus is a gentlemen, just like me!” As Atticus advised, I “climbed into another’s skin and walked around in it.” I stepped into the shoes of another boy my age, blessed with a rare and magnificent father.
I have read this book six times, and it rests on my altar bookshelf. As I have become a lawyer and a father myself, I have stepped into the skin of Atticus, and I have taken measure of where I fall short and where I am satisfactory.
I sometimes wonder why I became a small-town lawyer who considers it his ethical duty to run counterclockwise to the majority. Why do I persist in committing social suicide and broadcasting belief in my cherished progressive causes to the reddest state in the USA? Why do I foist my views on marriage equality on my neighbors who do not recognize gay rights as a valid struggle for civil rights any more than Southerners of the thirties thought the African- American struggle valid? Where does my oppositional attitude come from? Why have I exchanged the “pulpit Gospel” for what I believe to be the real one? Why do I see the Bible as a "whiskey bottle" in the hands of so many people? Then I remember. I am the adopted child of Atticus Finch.
I’m sorry if you came here seeking a review of a beloved book and you got me instead. Some books are so well known that there is nothing new to write. Yet some books wound us so deeply that they become a part of the landscape of our scars. Some books absorb our pain; some books inflict pain; some books transform our pain. This book served as a conduit for the pain of a fatherless boy. Harper Lee helped him come to grips with the magnitude of what he had lost. She taught him a new metaphor--that his father was a mockingbird, slain by God. Steve, Steve, "stand up....your father’s passin.’
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it. To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story, by a young Alabama woman, claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
I met Atticus Finch the year my father died. My father was kind, soft-spoken, and courteous. Like Atticus, “he did not do the things our schoolmates’ fathers did: he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish, or drink or smoke. He sat in the living room and read.”
While he was alive, I wished my father more heroic, but I was a boy with a shallow understanding of courage. Worst of all, my father told self-effacing stories like the one about a drunken Marine who sneered at him. “I bet I could kick your ASS!” My father’s reply: “I bet, too, you could!” My dad defused him, bought him coffee, thanked him for his service, and the Marine left peacefully. I was not impressed. But then, I read about Bob Ewell spitting in Atticus’ face, and Atticus calmly wiping the spittle and walking away. Like Saul of Tarsus, the scales fell from my eyes. I was blind, but then I saw.
One of the themes that resonated with me was the way Jem's appreciation of his father grows. Jem proclaims, “Atticus is a gentlemen, just like me!” As Atticus advised, I “climbed into another’s skin and walked around in it.” I stepped into the shoes of another boy my age, blessed with a rare and magnificent father.
I have read this book six times, and it rests on my altar bookshelf. As I have become a lawyer and a father myself, I have stepped into the skin of Atticus, and I have taken measure of where I fall short and where I am satisfactory.
I sometimes wonder why I became a small-town lawyer who considers it his ethical duty to run counterclockwise to the majority. Why do I persist in committing social suicide and broadcasting belief in my cherished progressive causes to the reddest state in the USA? Why do I foist my views on marriage equality on my neighbors who do not recognize gay rights as a valid struggle for civil rights any more than Southerners of the thirties thought the African- American struggle valid? Where does my oppositional attitude come from? Why have I exchanged the “pulpit Gospel” for what I believe to be the real one? Why do I see the Bible as a "whiskey bottle" in the hands of so many people? Then I remember. I am the adopted child of Atticus Finch.
I’m sorry if you came here seeking a review of a beloved book and you got me instead. Some books are so well known that there is nothing new to write. Yet some books wound us so deeply that they become a part of the landscape of our scars. Some books absorb our pain; some books inflict pain; some books transform our pain. This book served as a conduit for the pain of a fatherless boy. Harper Lee helped him come to grips with the magnitude of what he had lost. She taught him a new metaphor--that his father was a mockingbird, slain by God. Steve, Steve, "stand up....your father’s passin.’