To Kill a Mockingbird

WRITTEN
BY
HARPER LEE
 The Divided World of
To Kill A Mockingbird

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SETTING AND SOCIAL ISSUES CONFRONTED IN HARPER

LEE’S NOVEL,
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
 To Kill a Mockingbird is…
A picture of 1930s
American society
seen through the
eyes of Scout Finch,
an eight-year-old
girl in Maycomb,
Alabama.

Scout’s world is
divided, segmented,
and separated by:
social class, race,
gender, and age.
 “Scout”
aka
Jean Louise Finch

An adult retelling
the story of her
girlhood from 6 to
8 years of age.

It is not told by a
six year old, but an
adult recording her Point of View:
life as she saw it at Speaker / Narrator
six.
 To Kill a Mockingbird is…
A Bildungsroman
Meaning: A novel of
growing up & maturing
German:
Bildung=maturing;
Roman=novel
In a Bildungsroman, the
central character grows
from a state of
innocence and naïveté
to one of experience
and enlightenment.
It is a coming-of-age
novel, about the
journey of growing up.
 The Author: Harper Lee
Wrote To Kill a
Mockingbird (1st &
only novel) in 1960
while working in the
reservations
department of an
overseas airline.
She based the novel
on her experiences
growing up in
Monroeville, Alabama.
Lee was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction in 1961.
 The Setting
2 things define the novel’s setting:
The American South
(Maycomb, Alabama)

The Great
Depression
of the 1930s
 A Different World: Prejudice
Even though we can
identify with Scout’s
character and
experiences, her world is
dramatically different
from ours.
Today, we discourage
prejudice
Scout’s world: it was
assumed, acknowledged,
and encouraged
There were even laws
that enforced prejudice!
 A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
 Jim Crow Laws: a racial
caste system (a system
that separates people into
levels of society) that
operated primarily (not
exclusively) in southern
states from 1877 through
the 1960s.
 States could impose legal
punishments on people for
having social contact with
members of another race.
 Laws forbade interracial
marriage.
 Laws ordered business
owners and public
institutions to keep black
and white clients
separated.
 A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
African Americans were
not allowed to vote.
All interaction between
races was restricted.
Water fountains
Door entrances & exits
Hospitals, churches,
prisons and public schools
Public restrooms
Separate
accommodations were
inferior to those given to
whites.
Often, there were no
facilities offered at all.
 A Different World: Jim Crow Laws

• A Black male could

not offer his hand
(to shake hands)
with a White male
because it implied
being socially equal.
• A Black male could
not offer his hand to
a White woman,
because he risked
being accused of
rape.
A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
 A Different World: Jim Crow
Laws
Blacks and Whites
were not supposed to
eat together.
If they did, Whites
were to be served
first, and some sort of
partition was to be
placed between
A Different World: Jim Crow
Laws
 A Different World: Jim Crow
Laws
Lynch mobs directed
their hatred against
one (sometimes
several) victims.
The victim was an
example of what
happened to a Black
man who tried to
vote, or who looked
at a White woman, or
who tried to get a
White man's job.
 The Use of the “N” Word
It should be no surprise that
novel set in the racist *NOTE: You
atmosphere of 1930s Alabama
contains repeated use of the should NOT use
“N” word. the N-word
It is right to feel unless you are
uncomfortable with this word. writing a
The use of this word does NOT quotation from
mean that Harper Lee was the book
racist.
 In a novel about tense racial and
social issues in the 1930s south, it is
Lee’s responsibility to correctly
reflect the beliefs and language of
the people she is writing about.
 A Different World: Social Expectations
1930s Alabama had specific social
expectations:
 Children must be very polite to all
white adults. Any adult has the right
to scold and/or punish any
disrespectful child.
 People must be friendly and
hospitable.
 On Sundays, neighbors visit each other;
it’s rude to have your doors closed, as that
looks like you don’t want to socialize.
 Everyone goes to church.
 Men work to support their families;
women stay at home, care for their
families, & visit friends.
 Anyone who didn’t do these: viewed
with suspicion.
 Social Hierarchy in Maycomb, Alabama

“Somewhere I had
received the
impression that Fine
Folks were people
who did the best they
could with the sense
they had, but Aunt
Alexandria was of the
opinion…that the
longer a family had
been squatting
on one patch of land
the finer it was”
(130).
 A Comfortable World
Even though Scout’s world may
sound stifling and cruel, there
are many good things about it,
too:
Neighbors help one another
through tough times.
The community is close-knit;
everybody knows everybody
else’s business, but they also
care about each other.
There are people who don’t
share their community’s
prejudices and who fight
against them.
The Great Depression
A depression: a period of
drastic economic decline with
less business activity, falling
prices (so people don’t make
as much money) and high
levels of unemployment.
The Great Depression in
America began with a stock
market crash in 1929 and
didn’t end until 1941.
Millions who once had
enough money were now
poor.
Poor people became poorer.
 The Great Depression
Because of the
Depression, some children
in Scout’s class have no
food to bring for lunch and
no money to buy one.
Many children can’t pass
the first grade because
every year they have to
leave school to help their
families with the farming.
Some of her father’s law
clients can’t pay him in
money; instead, they give
him things from their
farms—such as firewood.
 The Great Depression
A poor farmer’s
wife and child.

A poor man’s
transportation
 Movie
theater
in an
Alabama
town.

A highway
signboard:
“Less Taxes-
More Jobs”
A small fictitious
town experiencing
the aftermath of
The Great
Depression.
*What is a caste
structure?
*What are the
implications of
“The Depression”?
*How might
Maycomb being a
small town affect
Setting:
the story? Maycomb, Alabama
Early 1930’s
 The Setting

A typical downtown area

A street like the

one Scout lives on
 Characters
Scout (Jean Louise Arthur “Boo” Radley:
Finch): 6 year old female Neighbor of the Finch
narrator family and a mystery to
Jeremy “Jem” Finch: the children who
Scout’s older brother represents part one of
Atticus Finch: Father of the novel
Tom Robinson: African-
Jem and Scout
Calpurnia: Housekeeper American man who is
and cook for the Finch accused of rape and
family whose trial represents
part two of the novel
 Maycomb, Alabama—1930s

This is the world

we enter in To Kill
a Mockingbird—
the world of the
Finch family:
8 year-old Scout
Scout’s 12 year-
old brother, Jem
 Maycomb, Alabama—1930s
Atticus
Finch, their
father and a
lawyer in
the town
Calpurnia,
their African
American
cook/nanny
 Literary Elements
Themes Plot
Prejudice: learning how The conflict of humanity
to judge in reasonable and society
fashion Two major plot strands,
Growing Up: family, Boo and Tom, break
society, self; finding novel into two parts
your place Boo and Tom mirror one
Courage: learning when, another
how, and what to fight **Challenge: Figure out
how they mirror…
 Theme Topics to SUBSEARCH for
Social Inequality
Race
Justice
Morality & Ethics
The Coexistence
of Good & Evil
Courage
 Writing Assignment

Select 1 of the 4 options and write two paragraphs to

respond to the prompt and have it ready for next
week
 Option 1:

Why is it important to “climb in someone’s

skin and walk around in it” in order to truly
understand a person?
 Option 2:

How does labeling and stereotyping influence

how we look at and understand the world?
 Option 3:

What is the relationship between intolerance

and injustice?
 Option 4:

In what ways does appearance now always

reflect reality?
What allows some individuals to take a stand
against prejudice/oppression while others
choose to participate in it?
What are the benefits and consequences of
questioning/challenging social order?
 Pulitzer Prize 1961
Sold over 30 million copies and is
Accolades
translated into over 40 languages
The novel To Kill a
Mockingbird and its “Best Novel of the Century” in
author Harper Lee have
received numerous 1999 by Library’s Journal
awards and
recognitions since the
In 100 Best English Novels from
first publication in
1960.
1923 to Present – Time Magazine
First on a 2006 list by librarians
who answered the question:
“Which book should every adult
read before they die?”
What does it
mean to “come
full circle”?
In chapter 1 there are
many clues that will
not be explained until
the end, nearly 300
pages later.

Chapter 1 is the most

challenging chapter in
the book.
Nevertheless, it
provides many
necessary clues. Stay Key Chapters:
with it… it is worth it! 1, 9, 15, 20, & 25