A Mocking Bird Dead

Its prestige stems from the topic it pertains to: racism and the treatment of African Americans. The novel narrates the tale of how a young girl’s father is appointed to the trial Tom Robinson, an African American man who has been falsely accused of raping a white lady, Mayella Ewell. Despite the conclusive evidence, the verdict of the trial favored Ewell, inevitably sending Robinson to prison. The heavily deluded mindset of both the judge and jury opened the eyes of Harper Lee’s readers to the grating truth.

In Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, a young white woman from Maycomb, Alabama, named Mayella Ewell is charging Tom Robinson a black man of rape. Mayella Ewell is not powerful in the sense that she is classified within class, race, and gender.

At the age of 89, on February 19, 2016, Harper Lee passed away. President Obama and the First Lady said in a statement that Lee "changed America for the better. When Harper Lee sat down to write To Kill a Mockingbird, she wasn’t seeking awards or fame. She was a country girl who just wanted to tell an honest story about life as she saw it," their statement said. “But what that one story did, more powerfully than one hundred speeches possibly could, was change the way we saw each other, and then the way we saw ourselves,” the statement added. “Through the uncorrupted eyes of a child, she showed us the beautiful complexity of our common humanity, and the importance of striving for justice in our own lives, our communities, and our country.” “Ms. Lee changed America for the better,” the President and First Lady said. “And there is no higher tribute we can offer her than to keep telling this timeless American story – to our students, to our neighbors, and to our children – and to constantly try, in our own lives, to finally see each other.” (Shapiro,

Author: Harper Lee | Born April 28, 1926Grew up in a small townFather was a lawyerOnly novel publishedWon Pulitzer prize |

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird stunned readers across the nation, giving them a clear insight into racial relations in the South during the 1930’s. The book was accepted into the literary world under much criticism and readers were left with many questions about the characters in the book. They lost hope of rentering the world of Maycomb again until 2015, 55 years after Scout, Jem, and Atticus came to life, when Go Set A Watchman, a sequel, was published. Although Go Set A Watchman and To Kill A Mockingbird were released decades apart, the two books have many similarities and differences such as the development of the main character, Scout,

To Kill a Mockingbird by Nelle Harper Lee, was narrated by six-year-old Jean Louise (Scout) Finch and is influenced by her young age. Harper Lee created a book about deep topics and lightened them through Scout’s childhood memories. The book describes a racist situation through the eyes of a child, and Scout’s journey to see right from wrong. Scout sees throughout the story that African Americans deserve freedom as much as anyone. The book is affected by its narrator’s age because of its innocence, Scouts ignorance, and the adult ideas put into a child's life.

To Kill a Mockingbird was a very influential book in the eyes of a growing young woman in America in the 1930’s from the eyes of Jean Louise as a child and Jean reminiscing or reflecting as an adult about the past. Mayella Ewell was a white woman who was looked down upon by her own race and the African Americans were too scared to talk to her. Mayella was looked at to be powerless over her own life and others. If she is, then why does she win the case against Tom Robinson? In the town of Maycomb race, class, and gender played larger roles than some may think let's determine how.

Nelle Harper Lee, born April 28, 1926 was named after her grandmother, Ellen. Her mother was Francis Cunningham Finch, born August 14, 1888, and her father was Amass Coleman Lee, born in 1880. Mr. Lee grew up as a farmer in Florida before moving to Alabama and settling down with Francis. They had three children before Nelle. The oldest was Alice Finch Lee (1911) and she was fifteen when Nelle was born. The second oldest was Louise Lee Finch (1916) who was ten years Nelle’s senior. The second youngest child, and only son of the Lee family, was Edwin Lee (1920). Because of the mere six year age difference Edwin and Nelle were very close growing up.

During the 1930s, discrimination against African Americans was extremely prominent in southern towns. These towns characterized African Americans using different archetypes despite their actual personality, which widened the gap between the two races. In her book To Kill A Mockingbird, author Harper Lee uses the character of Tom Robinson to show how said archetypes against African Americans provides justification for racial mistreatment for white southerners. In the book, Tom Robinson, an African American man, is accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell. Atticus, his appointed lawyer, finds many faults in Mayella's case, saying, “ I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have

As the United States “progresses” in economic, educational and technological advancements we still are fighting for racial equality. With more than 50 years since the brown vs. board of education case there is still incidents like Ferguson, Baton Rouge, and Phiando Castile where many questions are still unanswered. However, Harper Lee dealt with these same problems in 1960 when she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee created an emotionally confronting story. Lee writes through the eyes of “Scout” a lawyer’s daughter in a small sleepy town of Maycomb in Alabama during the great depression. Throughout the book “Scout” learns coming of age lessons from Atticus and her own experiences. But when Atticus takes on a case defending a black man (Tom Robinson) convicted for rapping a white woman (Mayella Ewell) and is found guilty. “Scout” her brother Jem begin to understand the effects of the prejudices in society. Therefore, Lee applies the literary concepts of diction and tone to revel the truth that prejudices in society negatively affect the way people treat each other in To Kill a Mocking Bird.

“Even among the poor whites, there were social divisions: at the bottom of the social rung, even below the poorest whites, were those who only two generations before would have been slaves. In To Kill a Mockingbird, this poor white bigotry was personified through Bob Ewell”(Mancini, Candice 9). Tom Robinson was known for being and honest man in the black community. He would go to church often and he was a family man. In contrast, Bob Ewell was the town drunk and was by no means a model citizen. Clearly the better man was Tom but due to his race, many people believed Bob and Mayella Ewell when they said that Tom had raped Mayella. In reality, Mayella kissed Tom, “she was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in [their] society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man … a strong young Negro man”(Lee, Harper 204). At the time Lee was growing up, whites and blacks were still segregated and it was inconceivable that the two races consort.

On April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, Nelle Harper Lee was born to Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch Lee. Along with her siblings, Alice, Louise, and Edwin, Harper was educated in Monroeville Public Schools before going on to attend Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. After a year at Huntingdon, Lee decided to follow in the footsteps of her father and began studying law at the University of Alabama in 1945 [2]. She left there to study abroad at Oxford University, Wellington Court in England [4]. After returning to the United States, she continued her education at the University of Alabama. However, in 1950, six months prior to completing her law degree, Lee moved to New York hoping to begin

Harper Lee's ‘To kill a Mockingbird’ explores the prejudicial issues which plague over the town Maycomb. Harper Lee uses the trial of Tom Robinson a black man accused of rape on a young white girl, Mayella as a central theme to portray the prominence of racial discrimination in Maycomb. The racial prejudice is also widely shown through the characterisation of Atticus. Having Scout as the narrator allows Harper Lee to highlight the gender inequity through a youthful unbiased perspective. The chauvinistic attitudes and prejudiced views of most of the town’s folk leaves Maycombs social hierarchy in an unfair order, victimising many of the town’s people due to their socially non-conforming habits some ‘socially unaccepted people’ including Boo

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in the tiny southern town of Monroeville, Alabama ("Harper Lee"). Her father Amasa Coleman Lee, had many occupations. He was a

The author of his novels was Harper Lee. Lee was born April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, the youngest of four children (three girls and a boy) born to Amasa Coleman Lee and Francis Cunningham Finch Lee (Shmoop). For most of Lee 's life, her mother suffered from mental illness, rarely leaving the house. It is believed that she may have had bipolar disorder (Shmoop). In 1944, Lee left home for Huntingdon College, a women 's school in Alabama, where she joined a sorority (Shmoop). She attended three colleges, studied law, and was briefly an exchange student at Oxford, but she received no degrees (“Harper”). In 1960, Lippincott published