To Kill A Mockingbird: Analysis and Context

Author:

Harper Lee 

• April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016
• American 
• TKAM published 1960
• Won 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature.
• Her mother was a homemaker
• Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, practiced law - before he became a title lawyer, he once defended two black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper
• Youngest of 4 children
• In 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature
• The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family and neighbours
• irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s
• depicted through the eyes of two children
• inspired by racist attitudes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama.
• From the time of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird until her death in 2016, Lee granted almost no requests for interviews or public appearances and, with the exception of a few short essays, published nothing further, until 2015. She did work on a follow-up novel—The Long Goodbye—but eventually filed it away unfinished.
• In 1966 Richmond, Virginia area school board attempted to ban To Kill a Mockingbird as "immoral literature". The editor of 'The Richmond Newsletter', started the Beadle Bumble fund to pay fines for victims of what he termed "despots on the bench". He built the fund using contributions from readers, and later used it to defend books as well as people. After the board in Richmond ordered schools to dispose of all copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, Kilpatrick wrote, "A more moral novel scarcely could be imagined." In the name of the Beadle Bumble fund, he then offered free copies to children who wrote in, and by the end of the first week, he had given away 81 copies.
• THE FILM INTERPRETATION: Lee said of the 1962 Academy Award–winning screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird by Horton Foote: "I think it is one of the best translations of a book to film ever made." - thus it is important to note that this is an acknowledged and legitimate interpretation of the book and thus merits good authority to reference if needed
• Critical response to To Kill a Mockingbird was mixed: a number of critics found the narrative voice of a nine-year-old girl unconvincing and called the novel overly moralistic. 

Genre 

1. Southern Gothic
2. Coming of age
3. Bildungsroman - focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood - character change in really important

- progression of characterisation - consider age 

- gothic - dark colours - forrest greens, reds and black/ grey shades 

- consider southern/ rural / country 

- a moral figure - representations of Atticus - glasses? 

Need to explore:

Visual representations of,

• innocence - crayons, child's drawing
• intelligence - glasses, pen, tie 
• racism - black and white colours - contrasts
• rural - trees, leaves
• mockingbird - just the wing, the sound, feather? if at all necessary 

10 adjectives that describe the book:

1. Childhood 
2. Mysterious
3. Morality
4. Inequality
5. Prejudice
6. Vulnerability
7. Intelligent 
8. Injustice
9. Ambivalence 
10. Tribulation