...Atticus Finch is one of the most steadfastly honest and moral characters in “To Kill a Mockingbird“ by Harper Lee and his character remains, for the most part, unchanged throughout “To Kill a Mockingbird”. As any character analysis of Atticus Finch should note in terms of the plot of “To Kill a Mockingbird” he begins as an upstanding citizen who is respected and admired by his peers and even though he loses some ground during the trial, by the end of To Kill a Mockingbird he is still looked up to, both by his children and the community as whole—with all class levels included. As a lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch represents everything that someone working in the justice system should. He is fair, does not hold grudges, and looks at every situation from a multitude of angles. As Miss Maude quite correctly puts it in one of the important quotes from “To Kill a Mockingbird”by Harper Lee, “Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets” (87) and this could also be said of how he behaves in the courtroom. He is a skilled lawyer and without making outright accusations in a harsh tone he effectively points out that Bob Ewell is lying. Even more importantly, the subject of this character analysis, Atticus Finch, is able to gracefully point out to the jury that there although there probably are a few black men who are capable of crimes, “this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men” (208). His understanding of...
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...THE GLENCOE LITERATURE LIBRARY Study Guide for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee i Meet Harper Lee at the same university. In 1949, however, she withdrew and moved to New York City with the goal of becoming a writer. While working at other jobs, Lee submitted stories and essays to publishers. All were rejected. An agent, however, took an interest in one of her short stories and suggested she expand it into a novel. By 1957 she had finished a draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. A publisher to whom she sent the novel saw its potential but thought it needed reworking. With her editor, Lee spent two and a half more years revising the manuscript. By 1960 the novel was published. In a 1961 interview with Newsweek magazine, Lee commented: Writing is the hardest thing in the world, . . . but writing is the only thing that has made me completely happy. To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate and widespread success. Within a year, the novel sold half a million copies and received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Within two years, it was turned into a highly acclaimed film. Readers admire the novel’s sensitive and probing treatment of race relations. But, equally, they enjoy its vivid account of childhood in a small rural town. Summing up the novel’s enduring impact in a 1974 review, R. A. Dave called To Kill a Mockingbird . . . a movingly human drama of the jostling worlds—of children and adults, of innocence and experience, of kindness and cruelty, of love and hatred, of humor...
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...“To Kill a Mockingbird” Analysis Harper Lee published “To Kill a Mockingbird “ in 1960, a time buzzing with racial segregation and irrational injustice. She based the book on various events that were all to real, only fifty years ago. Throughout the book, the author captures these horrendous inequalities and is able to explore these subjects through various situations and characters. However, it is not always just the color of one’s skin as to the reason of why they are treated differently. Lee is able to display examples of prejudice based on class and status of a person, rather than race alone, through the use of abstract symbols through the use of characters. Harper Lee use birds to symbolize traits in various characters throughout the book. Although it is not just mockingbirds used as the only bird example. When Jem and Scout receive guns to shoot for fun, Atticus warns them against shooting mockingbirds. However, he states that they may shoot all the blue jays they desire. Blue jays are the nuance bird; this connects to Bob Ewell due to the fact that he is the perfect display of a blue jay. The blue jays represent the prejudiced citizens of Maycomb; they are ever present and continue to taunt others. Atticus goes on to tell the kids that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. The mockingbird is the innocent bird and therefore sums up Tom Robinson the most clearly. As being an innocent man that is only being tried due to his race, he embodies the mockingbird perfectly. Throughout...
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...write stories which are a reflection of the attitudes and the norms of their time and contemporary Southern fiction reflects this. The southern part of the United States has always had a large percentage of people of African descent living there. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two states actually had an African-American majority; South Carolina and Mississippi. However, the White community was, and still is the socially and economically dominant group and this can be seen in much of Southern contemporary. Several aspects of race were explored by various authors and they include: Racist words against blacks Contemporary Southern fiction frequently contained a lot of racist words, lines and dialogue. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird,...
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...TKAM Literary Analysis Inequality and prejudice plays what I believe is the most important role in the story To Kill a Mockingbird. Events such as Tom Robinsons trial emphasize this point. Also points such as the game Scout and Jem conjured up to be about Boo Radley’s life. Some points of the book where Aunt Alexandra talks about others as if they are less than them shows that she is basically the living embodiment of racial and social discrimination. These all show the strong tension between the people of Maycomb and those who they believe are different. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee emphasizes the theme of inequality and prejudice through metaphors, tone and characterization. My first piece of evidence to support the theme of prejudice in the town of Maycomb is when Aunt Alexandra was talking to scout about inviting Walter Cunningham (Jr.) over for dinner and Scout is complaining why Aunt Alexandra wont let her play with him and she says, “I’ll tell you why…Because—he—is—trash, that’s why you cant play with him.” This is an example of a metaphor used to describe that Walter is “Worse than them” essentially. This supports the theme of inequality by showing that Aunt Alexandra doesn’t want Scout playing with Walter because she believes they are in some sort of higher “social class”. For my second piece of evidence I have another quote from Aunt Alexandra. This time she is speaking with Atticus about getting rid of Calpurnia because she is black. The quote...
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...protagonists in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, must endure this evolution with the help of their father. Atticus, an honest and righteous...
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...The novel To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee in 1960, explores the values and attitudes of America in the 1930's through the portrayal of relationships. Mockingbird was written to portray the period of the Great Depression, the Emancipation Proclamation, Jim Crow Laws and the abolishment of slavery. This is reflected in the text through the representation of individual, social and political relationships, which can be highlighted through further analysis of the morals and values associated with social class, racial inequality and familial bonds within these relationships. Lee's characterisation, themes and setting serves to demonstrate how literature can be used to effectively reflect a particular context in a way that conveys a message or moral. Morals and values are a substantial influence in the relationships that were established in American society in the 1930's. Mockingbird allows us to understand the relationship between parents and children during this period and the associated morals and values. An example of this lies in the relationship based on the values of respect and trust between Atticus and his children. Lee displays this when Atticus reprimands Jem for harassing Boo Radley. He uses direct language, such as "Tell me, to question Jem, to which Jem replies obediently and honestly, "Yes, sir. Atticus uses a tone of authority towards Jem and Jem responds submissively. This dialogue conveys the personal relationships between parents and children in...
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...Mockingbird‘s Faded Childhood Innocence Irish poet William Butler Yeats once said, “The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.” There is no truer an example in literature than in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. In the novel the author uses the perspective of the novel’s storyteller, Miss Jean Louise Finch, more commonly known as Scout, and her brother Jeremy, nicknamed Jem, to highlight the blind innocence that comes as a byproduct of childhood. It is this innocence that also disappears from the children’s perspective in the novel. At least at first the two, blinded by their innocence, are unaware of the more mature and even sometimes ominous events and actions that eventually occur in the novel’s unveiling plot. It is because of their unwearied characters that Lee is able to best show how the events that occur in the lives of young characters causes blind innocence to disappear over time. Throughout the novel, there is a constant turn of events that ultimately leaves the children disillusioned with all their preconceived notions of all that is morally just and good. As Yeats said, time indeed proves to be the enemy for the children’s innocence, and by the novel’s end their worldly perspective is irreversibly changed. In the opening of the novel, Jean Louise Finch is revealed to be a grown woman looking back on her youth. The focal point of the narrative in particular is an innocent period from her childhood when she is six years old, just...
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...In the 1930s bigotry was more accepted than in today’s current society. Since Tom Robinson’s time, the legal system has been taken apart. It is interesting to see how conformity has changed from the 1930s to the 21st century. In the years 2009-2010, a University of Vermont professor looked at a statistics to see how many more times people of color are to be pulled over in a car than white people. The statistics show: “An analysis of traffic stop data from four police departments in Chittenden County shows that blacks are more often stopped by law enforcement than their white and Asian counterparts. Blacks are two times more likely to be to pull over than whites in Burlington and South Burlington.” The forces of conformity are more cultural than legal these days. People of color or who are “different” are covering from racists and prejudice people. A similar instance happened with Tom Robinson, Atticus, Calpurnia, and Mr. Dolphus Raymond being outcasts from society. Since they were outcasts, they were treated with less respect and privilege. Harper Lee wants the reader to take away from this; Take a moment before judging another person or racially profiling someone...
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...Analysis Q’s 1. What is the comparison between Boo and a Mockingbird and why hurting both considered a sin by Scout, Heck Tate, and Atticus When Jem and Scout received air rifles as presents, Atticus told them to only shoot cans. If they must shoot birds, only shoot Bluejays and never Mockingbirds as that would be a sin. It is the only time he ever said anything was a sin. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,” (Page 119, Chapter 11, Miss Maudie). Heck Tate, though he knew that Boo killed Bob Ewell with a kitchen knife, thought it would be a sin...
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...Teaching Middle and High School Student Using Literature Outline: I. Short Stories a) Activating Prior Knowledge b) Responding to the Selection c) Short Story Selections 1. Suggested Activities to use with Various Groups II. Oral Tradition Literature – Tall Tales and Folktales a) Analyze characteristics and plots of Folktales and Tall Tales b) Understanding Hyperbole c) Writing a Tall Tale d) Selections of Oral Tradition Literature III. Novel Studies a) Previewing the novel b) Defining and Understanding Elements of c) Character Analysis d) Problems and Solutions of the story IV. Historical Fiction a) Activating background/prior knowledge b) Setting a purpose for reading c) Writing about historical fiction V. Realistic Fiction a) Evaluating Realistic Fiction b) Responding to the selection c) Distinguishing between Fact and Opinion d) Summarizing the Story Chapter 1 – Short Stories: A short story is, like the name says, a short literary composition. The action is compact and every single event is crucial to the development of the plot. The time span covered within the action of a short story could vary from a few...
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...To Kill A Mocking Bird BY HARPER LEE Novel Analysis I.BACKGROUND IN FORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nelle Harper Lee (born April 28, 1926) is an American author known for her 1960 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Despite being Lee's only published book, it led to Lee being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007.Lee has also been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, but has always declined to make a speech. Other significant contributions of Lee include assisting her close friend, Truman Capote, in his research for the book In Cold Blood. II.INFORMATION ABOUT THE NOVEL Classification- To Kill a Mockingbird is embodied by Atticus Finch, who is virtually unique in the novel in that he has experienced and understood evil without losing his faith in the human capacity for goodness. Atticus understands that, rather than being simply creatures of good or creatures of evil, most people have both good and bad qualities. The important thing is to appreciate the good qualities and understand the bad qualities by treating others with sympathy and trying to see life from their perspective. He tries to teach this ultimate moral lesson to Jem and Scout to show them that it is possible to live with conscience without losing hope or becoming cynical. In this way, Atticus is...
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...Sydney Poole AP Language Arts Jameson 24 January 2016 Prose Essay In the article, I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Sing by Francine Prose, she feels uncertain about the process of teaching through selected books. Prose gives a few examples from To Kill a Mockingbird to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as well as various textbook short stories. Prose is questions the effectiveness of using literary works to teach values through different traits that certain characters exude. She writes, “The narrator of Caged Bird is good, her rapist is bad; Scout and Atticus Finch are good, their bigoted neighbors are bad.” This is a twodimensional way of looking at the characters and their development. Another point found in this article is that teachers plant their own interpretation of a work in their students heads. Prose adds “ … this moving, funny novel (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is being taught not as a work of art but as a piece of damning evidence against that bigot, Mark Twain.” Which changes Prose’s initial excitement upon finding that work on the list. Overall, on this topic Prose conveys that she does not believe that values can be taught through literature in a school setting. However, I believe that novels can teach a lesson. Prose writes about how lessons are taught to high school readers as if they cannot draw their own conclusions about what they read. Some may be unable to think for themselves, but it is from the poin...
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...versus Ethics ......................................................................................................................... 5 Responsibility and Culpability ............................................................................................................. 6 Atonement .......................................................................................................................................... 9 Law and Legality .................................................................................................................................... 10 Race and Ethnicity................................................................................................................................. 11 To Kill a Mockingbird...
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...Most people recognize the titles of literary works such as To Kill A Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, and The Great Gatsby, which are considered classics. These works have been around long enough to gather literary acclaim and this has contributed to their widespread recognition. Charlotte Brontë’s coming of age novel, Jane Eyre, qualifies as a classic because it has been read in Literature classes and libraries around the world for the past one hundred and sixty years, proving it can withstand the test of time. Her classic writing style, unforgettable characters, and literary acclaim have all contributed to the novel’s success. These same characteristics apply to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, supporting that this novel will also stand the test of time. Each author has a style uniquely their own, with...
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