Honors Language Arts 10 To Kill a Mocking Bird Historical Background

1. Honors Language Arts 10To Kill a Mocking BirdHistorical Background Course Target: I can read to understand and analyze a variety of short stories, non fiction, novels, technical selections, and classical works of merit.

2. Harper Lee • Childhood • Born on April 28th, 1926 in a small town called Monroeville, Alabama which is south of Montgomery and near Jackson. • Her father was a lawyer • She loved to read • Was five years old when the Scottsboro Trials began. • The Great Depression and the Scottsboro Trials influenced her writing.

3. Then in 1960…. Now…. Harper Lee

4. Harper Lee Ever heard of Truman Capote? One of Lee’s childhood friends was Truman Capote, the author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Rumor has it that it was Truman Capote who urged her to write.

5. Education • Graduated high school and attended an all-female college called Huntingdon College in Montgomery • Pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama • Also studied one year at Oxford University, but dropped out to write! • In the 1950s Harper Lee worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines in New York City while she pursued writing.

6. CREATION OF TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD • In 1957 Miss Lee submitted the manuscript of her novel To Kill a Mockingbird to the J. B. Lippincott Company. • Published on July 11, 1960, her only published book.

7. Who is Harper Lee? • Harper Lee prefers to keep her life private; she does not give interviews and very little is known about her today. • She has only published 3 short articles since her novel • Harper Lee’s cousin, Richard Williams, asked the recluse when she’s going to come out with another book. “And she said, ‘Richard, when you’re at the top, there’s only one way to go’”

8. Autobiographical Elements • Atticus Finch is based on Lee’s own father, Amasa, a lawyer. • The narrator, Scout is apparently modeled after Lee herself as a child. • The fictional town of Maycomb re-creates the author’s hometown of Monroeville. • Home town neighbor Sue Ann Pressley says that the town’s old courthouse now draws 20,000 visitors a year and that “the old town square Lee explored barefoot and in overalls still stands, with the red-brick courthouse with the clock chimes and the hardware stores.”

10. RELEVANCE TODAY • TKM is the 4th most taught book in the nation. • Won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1961 • a recent study of best-sellers found that, between 1995 and 1975, To Kill a Mockingbird was the seventh best-selling book in the United States, and the third best-selling novel. • In a 1991 “Survey of Lifetime Reading Habits” that was conducted found that “among the books mentioned by its 5,000 respondents, Harper Lee’s TKM was second only to the Bible in being ‘most often cited as making a difference’ in people’s lives”

11. RELEVANCE TODAY • "Although occasionally faulted as melodramatic, To Kill a Mockingbird is widely regarded as one of the most sensitive and revealing portraits of the American South in contemporary literature." • Edgar H. Shuster is quoted in World Literature Criticism as saying, "The achievement of Harper Lee is not that she has written another novel about race prejudice, but rather that she has placed race prejudice in a perspective which allows us to see it as an aspect of a larger thing; as something that arises from phantom contacts, from fear and lack of knowledge or 'education' that one gains through learning what people are really like when you 'finally see them.'"

12. Her writing is not too subtle to see clearly her use of… • Imagery • Symbolism • Irony • Metaphor • Allusion • Theme • Character development