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To Kill a Mockingbird: An Introduction

To Kill a Mockingbird: An Introduction. One of the most influential novels in American history. Rated, after the Bible, as one book “most often cited as making a difference” in people’s lives Considered the one book “every adult should read before they die” by British librarians

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To Kill a Mockingbird: An Introduction

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  1. To Kill a Mockingbird:An Introduction

  2. One of the most influential novels in American history. • Rated, after the Bible, as one book “most often cited as making a difference” in people’s lives • Considered the one book “every adult should read before they die” by British librarians • Voted the “Best Novel of the 20th century” by readers of the Library Journal • Ranked fifth on the Modern Library’s Reader’s List of the 100 Best Novels in the English language since 1900

  3. So what’s so special about To Kill a Mockingbird?

  4. “Literature helps us to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.” ~ C.S. Lewis

  5. “The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think.” ~James McCosh

  6. Reading---and thinking---requires careful attention to detail

  7. Pay careful attention to the butterfly in the following picture: What is it flying to? What color is it?

  8. Pay careful attention to the woman in the following picture: Is her eye open or closed? What color is her lipstick?

  9. You can learn to . . . see things differently.

  10. Questions to ask yourself while reading To Kill a Mockingbird: • What am I learning • to see with “other eyes, • to imagine with other imaginations, and • to feel with other hearts”? • What is this book making me think about?

  11. The Author • Nelle Harper Lee, 34 year-old woman • Born (1926) and raised in Monroeville, AL • Daughter of Amasa Lee, a small-town lawyer and widower • Law school drop out, 1949 • Childhood friend of author Truman Capote

  12. The Setting • Maycomb, Alabama, a tiny (fictional) town, much like the real town of Monroeville.

  13. small-town Alabama, 1930s

  14. CourthouseMonroeville, Alabama

  15. An Alabama Sharecropper’s Home, 1936

  16. African American church in Alabama in the 1930s

  17. The Setting • Early 1930’s, during the Great Depression

  18. The Scottsboro Boys1931-1937 Nine African American teenagers falsely accused of rape. The investigations and trials lasted 6 years

  19. A white lawyer, Sam Leibowitz, defended the accused boys.

  20. The Dust Bowl in Oklahoma created problems . . . and extreme poverty in every state in America.

  21. Franklin D. Roosevelt succeeded Herbert Hoover as President

  22. King Kong, the hit movie of 1933

  23. Lou Gerhig and Babe Ruth were the most famous baseball players in America

  24. America in the 1950s while Harper Lee was writingTo Kill a Mockingbird

  25. Southern states opposed school integration

  26. May 1954: Supreme Court Orders School Integration

  27. August 1955:A 14 year-old Chicago boy, Emmett Till, is murdered in Mississippi

  28. Till’s killers are tried for murder and are declared “not guilty” by an all-white jury.

  29. The Characters • Narrator: Scout Finch, six-year-old girl • Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, widower, & small-town lawyer • Jem Finch, Scout’s older brother • Dill Harris, strange, pint-sized summer neighbor • ‘Boo’ Radley, mysterious & reclusive neighbor • Tom Robinson, African American man accused of rape • Bob Ewell, poor red-neck racist

  30. Atticus teaches Scout an important lesson

  31. The Story • Set in small-town Alabama in the 1930s • Spans three years • Narrated by Scout • 3 children learn about life by witnessing the complicated problems facing adults in their small Alabama town.

  32. Boo Radley’s house

  33. What will To Kill a Mockingbird make you think about? What can you learn from reading it?

  34. “If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”~Atticus Finch, TKAM, p. 34

  35. Whose skin will Scout get to climb into?

  36. What kind of people do we need to understand?

  37. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s garden’s, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hears out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”~Miss Maudie, TKAM, page 94

  38. Who will turn out to be the “mockingbirds” in this story?

  39. Who was excluded from mainstream American life in the 1930s? The 1950s? The 2000s?

  40. What will Scout and Jem learn about life and about human nature?

  41. Who will Scout---and you---learn . . . to see differently?

  42. To learn more about Harper Lee

  43. PowerPoint presentation prepared by Chris Crowe, Professor of English, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

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