To be completely honest, I think To Kill A Mockingbird is beyond incredible. No, that is not the entire review, but it is my opinion and I would be thoroughly surprised if anyone opposed it. Told through the eyes of young Scout Finch, a true tomboy living in 1930's Maycomb, Alabama, we are told a story of racism and fighting for equality in the Deep South of the USA.
Reading David Lodge's The Art of Fiction for AS, I remember one of the chapters being about the beginning of a novel, and when it may end. Some beginnings are just a paragraph long, some take a couple of chapters to get going. Harper Lee sets up the main theme of the plot thoroughly well with just under a hundred pages of beginning, but I don't resent her for it in any way. This doesn't mean that you can't get into it, as may be the case with some novels. And once at the end of the story you know exactly why Lee needed to take her time explaining everything.
Atticus Finch is the father of Jem and Scout Finch. Before you ask, Jem is short for Jeremy, who at the start is in the fifth grade (however old that makes him – I think it's about nine); and Scout is a nickname for Jean Louise, who is a good four years younger than her brother. Scout tells us all about their neighbourhood: the spooky Radley Place two doors down on the right; friendly Miss Maudie and her azaleas; Miss Stephanie the gossip; Mrs Dubose the terrifying old lady three doors down on the left; to name but a few. Their first summer, where the story more or less opens, is spent with a new and similarly adventurous friend named Dill Harris from Meridian, Mississippi, and through their activities the reader learns that they are typical children, playing outdoors and getting into trouble.
Evidently there is a more significant tale to be told here. Atticus is a lawyer, and the first case that we are told about of his is where he is defending a black man. On witnessing the court case through Scout's eyes, we know that he is innocent. For this man has been accused of raping a Ewell girl: a white family who live on a dumpster near a 'Negro' settlement, sponging off relief cheques and who are really the lowest of the low. As Scout puts it so perfectly: “All the little man [Mr Ewell – the girl's father] on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbours was that, if scrubbed with lye soap with very hot water, his skin was white.”
Of course, anyone who reads this book knows that in 1930's America there was extreme prejudice against the black inhabitants of the country. Atticus tells his own children, with much resentment, that even if a black defendant is clearly innocent, the jury will always take the word of a white man over his, no matter how dirty and rude said white man is. Hitler is mentioned briefly in one of Scout's 'Current Events' classes, and when her teacher Miss Gates says that it is wrong of Hitler to persecute the Jews, one boy appears to be confused why they should be the victims, since they are white. When Miss Gates says “over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced,” only Scout seems to think it all very hypocritical, with the black community in mind.
If you haven't read this book then dear Lord read it now. The not-so-ignorant view point of a young girl who is heavily influenced by her hilariously precocious older brother makes it absolutely perfect. The only thing I would criticise about To Kill A Mockingbird is that it comes to an end: I so desperately didn't want it to.
By Jess
By Jess
