To Kill a Mockingbird

WRITTEN
BY
HARPER LEE
 The Divided World of
To Kill A Mockingbird

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SETTING AND SOCIAL ISSUES CONFRONTED IN HARPER

LEE’S NOVEL,
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
 To Kill a Mockingbird is…
A picture of 1930s
American society
seen through the
eyes of Scout Finch,
an eight-year-old
girl in Maycomb,
Alabama.

Scout’s world is
divided, segmented,
and separated by:
social class, race,
gender, and age.
 “Scout”
aka
Jean Louise Finch

An adult retelling
the story of her
girlhood from 6 to
8 years of age.

It is not told by a
six year old, but an
adult recording her Point of View:
life as she saw it at Speaker / Narrator
six.
 To Kill a Mockingbird is…
A Bildungsroman
Meaning: A novel of
growing up & maturing
German:
Bildung=maturing;
Roman=novel
In a Bildungsroman, the
central character grows
from a state of
innocence and naïveté
to one of experience
and enlightenment.
It is a coming-of-age
novel, about the
journey of growing up.
 The Author: Harper Lee
Wrote To Kill a
Mockingbird (1st &
only novel) in 1960
while working in the
reservations
department of an
overseas airline.
She based the novel
on her experiences
growing up in
Monroeville, Alabama.
Lee was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction in 1961.
 The Setting
2 things define the novel’s setting:
The American South
(Maycomb, Alabama)

The Great
Depression
of the 1930s
 A Different World: Prejudice
Even though we can
identify with Scout’s
character and
experiences, her world is
dramatically different
from ours.
Today, we discourage
prejudice
Scout’s world: it was
assumed, acknowledged,
and encouraged
There were even laws
that enforced prejudice!
 A Different World: Jim Crow Laws
 Jim Crow Laws: a racial
caste system (a system
that separates people into
levels of society) that
operated primarily (not
exclusively) in southern
states from 1877 through
the 1960s.
 States could impose legal
punishments on people for
having social contact with
members of another race.
 Laws forbade interracial
marriage.
 Laws ordered business
owners and public
institutions to keep black
and white clients
separated.
 A Different World: Jim Crow Laws

• A Black male could

not offer his hand
(to shake hands)
with a White male
because it implied
being socially equal.
• A Black male could
not offer his hand to
a White woman,
because he risked
being accused of
rape.
 A Different World: Social Expectations
1930s Alabama had specific social
expectations:
 Children must be very polite to all
white adults. Any adult has the right
to scold and/or punish any
disrespectful child.
 People must be friendly and
hospitable.
 On Sundays, neighbors visit each other;
it’s rude to have your doors closed, as that
looks like you don’t want to socialize.
 Everyone goes to church.
 Men work to support their families;
women stay at home, care for their
families, & visit friends.
 Anyone who didn’t do these: viewed
with suspicion.
 Social Hierarchy in Maycomb, Alabama

“Somewhere I had
received the
impression that Fine
Folks were people
who did the best they
could with the sense
they had, but Aunt
Alexandria was of the
opinion…that the
longer a family had
been squatting
on one patch of land
the finer it was”
(130).
The Great Depression
A depression: a period of
drastic economic decline with
less business activity, falling
prices (so people don’t make
as much money) and high
levels of unemployment.
The Great Depression in
America began with a stock
market crash in 1929 and
didn’t end until 1941.
Millions who once had
enough money were now
poor.
Poor people became poorer.
 The Great Depression
Because of the
Depression, some children
in Scout’s class have no
food to bring for lunch and
no money to buy one.
Many children can’t pass
the first grade because
every year they have to
leave school to help their
families with the farming.
Some of her father’s law
clients can’t pay him in
money; instead, they give
him things from their
farms—such as firewood.
 Characters
Scout (Jean Louise Arthur “Boo” Radley:
Finch): 6 year old female Neighbor of the Finch
narrator family and a mystery to
Jeremy “Jem” Finch: the children who
Scout’s older brother represents part one of
Atticus Finch: Father of the novel
Tom Robinson: African-
Jem and Scout
Calpurnia: Housekeeper American man who is
and cook for the Finch accused of rape and
family whose trial represents
part two of the novel
 Literary Elements
Themes Plot
Prejudice: learning how The conflict of humanity
to judge in reasonable and society
fashion Two major plot strands,
Growing Up: family, Boo and Tom, break
society, self; finding novel into two parts
your place Boo and Tom mirror one
Courage: learning when, another
how, and what to fight **Challenge: Figure out
how they mirror…
 Theme Topics to SUBSEARCH for
Social Inequality
Race
Justice
Morality & Ethics
The Coexistence
of Good & Evil
Courage