A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a
Mockingbird
Harper Lee

A Critical Analysis

Prof. J. Antonio

(G-Eng03) Academic Writing

Alejandro Dy

II-BSCT
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Socio-historical Approach

Socio-Historical criticism is interested in identifying the social, cultural, political,

religious, and historical dynamics that are embodied within a text. It seeks to understand

how a person in the original audience of the text would have perceived it.

To Kill a Mockingbird describes the racism happened in the United States.

Racism in the United States has been a major issue ever since the colonial era and

the slave era. Legally sanctioned racism imposed a heavy burden on Native

Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latin Americans. European

Americans were privileged by law in matters of literacy, immigration, voting

rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure over periods of time

extending from the 17th century to the 1960s. Many non English European immigrant

groups, particularly American Jews, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, as well as other

non-English American immigrants from elsewhere, suffered xenophobic exclusion and

other forms of racism in American society.

In the story, we can see that Atticus Finch defended a Tom Robinson in the court.

Tom was accused by a White Lady for raping her. We know for the fact that White

Americans do not believe in the statements of Negros in that era. But because the judge

in the court is a White American, Tom was sent to jail. In the story, Atticus believes that

there is an equal right for everyone. Atticus did his best to defend Tom, but racism

affected the prejudice.

 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

The forces of good and evil in To Kill a Mockingbird seem larger than the small

Southern town in which the story takes place. Lee adds drama and atmosphere to her

story by including a number of Gothic details in the setting and the plot. In literature, the

term Gothic refers to a style of fiction first popularized in eighteenth-century England,

featuring supernatural occurrences, gloomy and haunted settings, full moons, and so on.

Among the Gothic elements in To Kill a Mockingbird are the unnatural snowfall, the fire

that destroys Miss Maudie’s house, the children’s superstitions about Boo Radley, the

mad dog that Atticus shoots, and the ominous night of the Halloween party on which Bob

Ewell attacks the children. These elements, out of place in the normally quiet, predictable

Maycomb, create tension in the novel and serve to foreshadow the troublesome events of

the trial and its aftermath.

Counterbalancing the Gothic motif of the story is the motif of old-fashioned,

small-town values, which manifest themselves throughout the novel. As if to contrast

with all of the suspense and moral grandeur of the book, Lee emphasizes the slow-paced,

good-natured feel of life in Maycomb. She often deliberately juxtaposes small-town

values and Gothic images in order to examine more closely the forces of good and evil.

The horror of the fire, for instance, is mitigated by the comforting scene of the people of

Maycomb banding together to save Miss Maudie’s possessions. In contrast, Bob Ewell’s

cowardly attack on the defenseless Scout, who is dressed like a giant ham for the school

pageant, shows him to be unredeemably evil.

 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-response criticism is a critical approach that shifts the emphasis to the

reader from the text or the work’s author and context. This approach focuses on the

individual reader’s evolving response to the text. The readers, through their own values

and experiences, “create” the meaning of the text and therefore there is no one correct

meaning.

When analyzing a text, from which a student will write a major paper, it is

advised that the student should first focus on the elements of a story: plot, setting,

atmosphere, mood, character, theme and title.  The next logical approach is to look at the

language (devices and patterns) and form of the text (structure). Then the student might

consider any of the following approaches such as New Historicism, New Criticism,

Archetypal Criticism or Cultural Criticism.

To Kill a mockingbird is just like the Philippine setting in Spanish era. It was

taught since high school that the Spaniards give more priority to those who have money.

The Filipinos became slaves of those Spaniards. Filipinos are also called Indio, means

slave. The justice in the Spanish era was in their hands. They punish Filipinos even

though they didn’t commit crime.

It was not only the class, also the race of different people living in the Philippines.

Spaniard looked down to Chinese people. Chinese people are isolated in only one place.

Because of the Spanish presence in the area, the Chinese people, who were living in the

area and engaging in free trade relations with the natives, were subjected to commercial
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

restrictions as well as laws requiring them to pay tribute to Spanish authorities. As a

result, the Chinese revolted against the Spaniards attacked the city. The said attempt was

fruitless, and the Chinese were defeated. In order to safeguard the city from similar

uprisings later, the Spanish authorities confined the Chinese residents and merchants to a

separate district.

Nowadays, there is a little trace in discrimination in terms of race. The

Department of Tourism warned the tourists not to insult the natives in the northern part of

the Philippines. Natives should be treated as a human also and not to be teased or make

laugh.
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Marxist Criticism

Based on the writings of Karl Marx (1818-1883) this school of thought contends

that history and culture is largely a struggle between economic classes, and literature is

often a reflection of the attitudes and interests of the dominant class. An often-repeated

statement from Marx expresses a basic idea specific to this form of criticism. “It’s not the

consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being

that determines their consciousness”.

Class, for Marx, is rooted in social relations of production, and cannot be referred

in the first place to relations of distribution and consumption or their ideological

reflections. In considering the class consciousness of the proletariat, Marxists are

therefore not concerned with the ideas of individual workers about their position in

society so much as with the following series of categories: relations of production;

conflict of workers and employers on this basis; conflict at the level of class; the

theoretical and practical struggle to build revolutionary parties of the working class, in

conflict with non-revolutionary and counter-revolutionary tendencies in the class and

their reflection inside the revolutionary party.

In the story, we can see that there is discrimination between the poor and the rich.

Scout Finch knew that the Cunningham’s are poor because they are farmers. She asked

Atticus, “Are we poor?” Atticus replied that they were not. Being poor for them were a

burden. They think that cannot survive or they were not be belong to the community.

There will be a social discrepancy among the poor and the rich. In the time the novel was

written, poor people are slaves.

 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Differences in social status are explored largely through the overcomplicated

social hierarchy of Maycomb, the ins and outs of which constantly baffle the children.

The relatively well-off Finches stand near the top of Maycomb’s social hierarchy, with

most of the townspeople beneath them. Ignorant country farmers like the Cunningham’s

lie below the townspeople, and the white trash Ewells rest below the Cunningham’s. But

the black community in Maycomb, despite its abundance of admirable qualities, squats

below even the Ewells, enabling Bob Ewell to make up for his own lack of importance by

persecuting Tom Robinson. These rigid social divisions that make up so much of the

adult world are revealed in the book to be both irrational and destructive. For example,

Scout cannot understand why Aunt Alexandra refuses to let her consort with young

Walter Cunningham. Lee uses the children’s perplexity at the unpleasant layering of

Maycomb society to critic the role of class status and, ultimately, prejudice in human

interaction.
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Formalism

Formalism is a movement in literary criticism that proposes close reading and

textual analysis of the text itself. It operates contrary to the previously favored focus on

the author’s biography, the historical context, and the perceived parallels between these

and the text. Practitioners focus on both the “external form” (e.g. ballad, ode) and the

“internal forms” (e.g. structure, repetition, patterns of figurative language, plot/content,

syntax/diction, tone, mood, context/setting, style, literary devices, theme). These

practitioners reject consideration of the author’s intention and the affect on the reader as

illegitimate.

Nelle Harper Lee born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, a sleepy

small town similar in many ways to Maycomb, the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Like

Atticus Finch, the father of Scout, the narrator and protagonist of To Kill a

Mockingbird,  Lee’s father was a lawyer. Among Lee’s childhood friends was the future

novelist and essayist Truman Capote, from whom she drew inspiration for the character

Dill. These personal details notwithstanding, Lee maintains that To Kill a

Mockingbird was intended to portray not her own childhood home but rather a

nonspecific Southern town. “People are people anywhere you put them,” she declared in

a 1961 interview.
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Lee began To Kill a Mockingbird in the mid-1950s, after moving to New York to

become a writer. She completed the novel in 1957 and published it, with revisions,

in 1960, just before the peak of the American civil rights movement.

Critical response to To Kill a Mockingbird was mixed: a number of critics found

the narrative voice of a nine-year-old girl unconvincing and called the novel overly

moralistic. Nevertheless, in the racially charged atmosphere of the early 1960s, the book

became an enormous popular success, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and selling over

fifteen million copies. Two years after the book’s publication, an Academy Award–

winning film version of the novel, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, was produced.

Meanwhile, the author herself had retreated from the public eye: she avoided interviews,

declined to write the screenplay for the film version, and published only a few short

pieces after 1961. To Kill a Mockingbird remains her sole published novel. Lee

eventually returned to Monroeville and continues to live there.

The most important theme of the Novel is the book’s exploration of the moral

nature of human beings. That is, whether people are essentially good or evil. Scout and

Jem assume that people are good because they have never seen evil. And must

incorporate it into their understanding of the world

The sub themes of the novel involve the threat that hatred, prejudice, and

ignorance pose to the innocent. People such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are not

prepared for the evil that they encounter, and as a result, they are destroyed.
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Feminist Criticism

Feminist Criticism is literary criticism based on feminist theories. It considers

texts with the knowledge that societies treat men and women inequitably. Feminist

criticism will analyze texts in light of patriarchal (male dominated) cultural institutions,

phallocentric (male centered) language, masculine and feminine stereotypes, and the

unequal treatment of male and female writers. Feminist criticism developed primarily in

the 1960’s and 1970’s, although it is evident in earlier works as well, for example in the

works of Virginia Woolf and Mary Wollstonecraft. More recent feminist and gender

studies investigate social constructions related to gender as they appear in literature.

In the novel, Scout is the protagonist. Scout is a female. Female symbolizes

equality. We can see that Scout is a neutral to all. She believes in herself. She led the

characters to open their minds in truth. We can see that Scout prove that Boo is not a bad

person. We saw that Boo helped Jem from the unknown man attempting to kill him. Boo

also the one who gives presents to Jem and Scout inside the tree hole.

Another thing is men not considered capable of nurturing children. This was

disagreed by the novel because we see that Atticus, father of Scout and Jem, was the one

who guided them in growing up. Atticus proved that men are also capable of nurturing

children in good aspects.

 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Philosophical Approach

Philosophical analysis is a general term for techniques typically used

by philosophers in the analytic tradition that involve "breaking down" (i.e. analyzing)

philosophical issues. Arguably the most prominent of these techniques is the analysis of

concepts (known as conceptual analysis). This article will examine the major

philosophical techniques associated with the notion of analysis, as well as examine the

controversies surrounding it.

From the novel, 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. It teaches us to look people in their good perspective so that we can

accept them. People who looked at the negative side of a person will be his burden. The

novel approaches this question by dramatizing Scout and Jem’s transition from a

perspective of childhood innocence, in which they assume that people are good because

they have never seen evil, to a more adult perspective, in which they have confronted evil

and must incorporate it into their understanding of the world. As a result of this portrayal

of the transition from innocence to experience, one of the book’s important subthemes

involves the threat that hatred, prejudice, and ignorance pose to the innocent: people such

as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are not prepared for the evil that they encounter, and,

as a result, they are destroyed. Even Jem is victimized to an extent by his discovery of the
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

evil of racism during and after the trial. Whereas Scout is able to maintain her basic faith

in human nature despite Tom’s conviction, Jem’s faith in justice and in humanity is badly

damaged, and he retreats into a state of disillusionment.

The moral voice of 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 able to

admire Mrs. Dubose’s courage even while deploring her racism. Scout’s progress as a

character in the novel is defined by her gradual development toward understanding

Atticus’s lessons, culminating when, in the final chapters, Scout at last sees Boo Radley

as a human being. Her newfound ability to view the world from his perspective ensures

that she will not become jaded as she loses her innocence.

Another philosophy from the novel is “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”

mockingbirds are only singing from their heart. They were shooting by the rangers for

their fun. Mockingbirds didn’t do anything to the rangers. Mockingbirds are innocent

from all happenings. Just like in the novel, every character is innocents
 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic criticism is literary criticism grounded in psychoanalytic theory of

the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Practitioners attempt to

psychoanalyze the author’s unconscious desires, the reader’s responses, and the

characters in the work. The last approach involves examining the text for symbols and

psychological complexes.

Mockingbird represents innocence. Like hunters who kill mockingbirds for sport,

people kill innocence, or other people who are innocent, without thinking about what

they are doing. Atticus stands firm in his defense of innocence and urges his children not

to shoot mockingbirds both literally and figuratively.

Boo Radley represents fear. Small town folks fear that if they act eccentric and

fail to adhere to social rules they too will end up like Boo, isolated and remembered as a

grotesque monster. In this fear that supports the social status quo and keeps individual

from standing up for that which they believe. Until people can understand and accept

boo, as scout does at the end of the book, they will always be stuck in a world filled with

fears, lies, and ignorance.

 A Critical Analysis on To Kill a Mockingbird

Guns represent false strength. According to Atticus, guns do not prove manhood

or bravery. Manhood and bravery come from a man’s ability to preserve and fight using

his wits, his heart, and his character.

The most important theme of the Novel is the book’s exploration of the moral

nature of human beings. That is, whether people are essentially good or evil. Scout and

Jem assume that people are good because they have never seen evil. And must

incorporate it into their understanding of the world

The sub themes of the novel involve the threat that hatred, prejudice, and

ignorance pose to the innocent. People such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are not

prepared for the evil that they encounter, and as a result, they are destroyed.