Book Review: To Kill a Mocking Bird

To Kill a Mocking Bird

‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ is a novel written by Harper Lee and won the Pulitzer Prize. The story takes place during the Great Depression in Alabama and is narrated by a young girl ‘Jean Lousie “Scout” Finch’. The story covers a period of approximately three years in which various events take place between Scout, her brother Jem and their friend Dill.

        The story originates when Scout and Jem start becoming seriously concerned about a house belonging to the Radleys. The family never opens doors or interacts with the people of the town. There are many myths regarding the house. Some say that the only son of the Radleys ‘Boo Radley’ is a phantom and is also a psychopath who tortures his parents by often putting a knife or a scissors through their legs and hands. As time passes, the children, on their way home from school, discover some sweets and toys in a knot-hole of a tree inside the Radley house’s courtyard. This happens every day and they realize that those gifts are actually meant for them. Unfortunately, for the kids, Mr. Radley soon fills it up with cement rendering them unable to receive further ‘gifts’.

        The second major incident takes place when a house in Scout’s neighborhood catches fire and as everyone was standing near the Radley house waiting for the fire truck to finish its job, someone sneakily put a blanket on Scout’s shoulders in the cold atmosphere. Later, when questioned the presence of the unfamiliar blanket, Atticus (Scout’s father) declared that the blanket was given by Boo Radley.

        As Scout’s father Atticus was a Lawyer with high moral standards, he had taken up a case of Tom, a Negro, who allegedly raped a white woman. Tom had recently met with an unfortunate accident that had fractured his left arm rendering him unable to move it. The white woman had bruises on the right side of her face which meant that the attacker was left handed. This, coupled with a ton of other evidences simply explained the innocence of Tom, but still, the decision was taken against him. The magical or unusual thing that happened was that previously, any case against a black was usually settled within minutes. The black always proven guilty but this time, in Tom’s case, the jury took a long time to prove Tom guilty. Woefully, he was shot when trying to escape prison. In response to Atticus trying to save a black, some of the white lower castes like the Euwells, turned against Atticus and his family. One night, as Jem and Scout were playing in the street, an Euwell came and tried to stab the children when in the nick of time, Boo Radley, a complete human (not a phantom) came and instead stabbed the man with his own knife. The incident was later said to be a regrettable accident.

        Coming to the themes the story carries, it might look like a narration of three years by a little girl but in reality, it carries deep moral lessons. Firstly, starting from the title of the novel, a mocking bird is a bird which mimics the sound of other birds and does no evil except singing his heart out. That is the reason the children, in the story, were told that it is a sin to kill a mocking bird. The mocking bird is symbolized as innocence and to kill a mocking bird is killing or destroying innocence. This innocence is the same as that in Jem and Scout who had to endure and bear the pain and the hatred of the town when their father was defending a black. Various names were called to the family like “nigger-lover”. Tom, who was totally innocent of his crime, can also be called a mocking bird. Boo Radley, who was later found out to have been beaten and ill-treated by his father, was also a mocking bird, but the evidence of his innocence is that after so much suffering in his life, he still didn’t have any hatred in his heart and had also developed a bond with the children who used to play games in his courtyard.