Southern Literary Messenger

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee was born in 1926, she is very well known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird (). Her father was a lawyer in their hometown Monroeville Alabama. He defended two black men, a father and a son, who were accused of murdering a white store clerk, similar to Atticus in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird (). Lee’s mother was a home keeper, she suffered from a very rare illness so she rarely left their home and also may have had a bipolar…

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee develops the theme of morality through the characters Atticus, Calpurnia, and Miss Maudie. In the book, Scout and her brother Jem spend their time playing with their friend, Dill, and spying on their highly secretive neighbor, Boo Radley. In addition, morality can be defined as principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong. Through these characters’ lives, Lee develops the theme of morality. To start, Lee conveys the theme of morality…

Suspenseful. Thrilling. Mysterious. Those are just some of the amazing qualities of Harper Lee’s work in chapter seven. I think Harper Lee wrote chapter seven in To Kill a Mockingbird to make people think about who the Radley’s could be. After reading chapter seven, I had to think about the events that occurred during that chapter and how they would impact the characters and the rest of the book. Lee wrote the chapter to also create suspense. When I read that Jem’s pants were sewn up, I felt a…

Flannery’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is one of her pieces that has a lot of literary criticism, and is her best-known story because of how popular it was. This short story is a great example of Southern Gothic Literature. Sylvia Bailey Sherman once said in her article “O’Connor favors a limited omniscient point of view, which generally focuses on a particular character’s flawed perception…

"You never truly understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around," said Atticus effectively summarizing the difficulty of understanding Boo Radley (Lee 30). Because of his reclusive nature, it was impossible for Maycomb 's citizens to understand Boo Radley. His isolation from society resulted in the total development of his character to come from outsiders until his appearance at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. As a result,…

Nelson Mandela said, “...that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear” (Greenberg). This perfectly describes one of the themes from Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Most of the characters sometime in the book have to find inner courage to face fear or opposition. However, one figure stands out from all the rest of the characters. Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley is the most courageous of all…

The Prevalence of Prejudice In To Kill A Mockingbird Prevalent means most frequent or commonly widespread. Prejudice is a strong unreasonable feeling of disliking or not trusting someone. The novel: To Kill A Mocking Bird, by Harper Lee, is a story in the setting of a fictional sleepy town called Maycomb in 1930's Alabama. The novel is about a young, intelligent daughter of a lawyer, called Jean Louise Finch, (known as Scout) and her adventures in a world of injustice and racism. Prejudice is a…

Standing accused of something never feels good, but being convicted of a crime that a person didn’t commit or feeling pain that they do not deserve feels even wrongfully worse. Throughout Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, characters’ lives are greatly affected in many ways by injustice. In the decision of his court case, Tom Robinson is accused and convicted of a crime he did not commit. Jem and Scout are attacked wrongfully by Bob Ewell, who tries to get back at Atticus. Rejected and hated by…

To Kill A Mockingbird Questions ZhiQing Li Chapter 1 Who is narrating the story? Why are the kid so interested in Boo Radley? What is Calpurnia to the kids? Do they consider her a part of the family? Chapter 2 Why was scout looked down upon just because she learned how to read before the other kids? Was the reason why Ms. Caroline failed to understand scout is because of her lack of experience? Does scout recognize the failure in the education system? Chapter 3 Why did Calpurnia…

Fear in To Kill A Mockingbird In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout, the narrator, exemplifies fear throughout Maycomb by way of many different characters. Within in the first few pages of To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout, the narrator says “But it a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb county had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.” (6) This is illustrated in many examples throughout the novel. To start, the people of Maycomb county quiver…