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Extended Essay: To Kill a Mockingbird

Many details of To Kill a Mockingbird are apparently autobiographical. Like Lee, the tomboy Scout is the daughter of a respected small town Alabama attorney. The plot involves a legal case, the workings of which would have been familiar to Lee, who studied law. Scout's friend Dill is commonly supposed to have been inspired by Lee's childhood friend and neighbor, Truman Capote, while Lee is the model for a character in Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Harper Lee has downplayed autobiographical parallels of the book. Yet Truman Capote, mentioning the character Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, described the details he considered biographical: "In my original version of Other Voices, Other Rooms I had that same man living in the house that used to leave things in the trees, and then I took that out. He was a real man, and he lived just down the road from us. We used to go and get those things out of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is absolutely true. But you see, I take the same thing and transfer it into some Gothic dream, done in an entirely different way."

Key Themes: importance of social class; importance of moral education and coexistence of good and evil.

1. Knows the significance of the Brown v. Board of Education case in advancing civil rights

2. Knows about resistance to civil rights in the South between 1954 and 1965

3. Knows why the "freedom ride" was important to the civil rights movement

4. Knows why the philosophy of "civil disobedience" was important to the civil rights movement

5. Knows why "non-violent resistance" was important to the civil rights movement

Ð'* The Great Depression was a dramatic, worldwide economic downturn beginning in some countries as early as 1928.

Ð'* The beginning of the Great Depression in the United States is associated with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday.

Ð'* The depression had devastating effects in both the industrialized countries and those which exported raw materials.

Ð'* International trade declined sharply, as did personal incomes, tax revenues, prices, and profits. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry.

Ð'* Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by 40 to 60 percent.

Ð'* Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as farming, mining and logging suffered the most.

Ð'* At the time, Herbert Hoover was President of the United States.

The Existence of Social Inequality:

Ð'* Differences