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Harper Lee Research Paper

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Few would be confident enough to write a book that shamed the very culture they were raised in. Harper Lee was. Lee grew up in the segregated south during the time of racial discrimination of African Americans (103). Due to her parents both being lawyers, her own experience of rejection and her friend and inspiration, Truman Capote living next door over the summer, Lee was able to follow her dreams and become an author even after financial set-backs and years of writing and revising just to get a book published (286). Inspired by her quiet childhood in the south, Harper Lee was known for her exceptional literary works such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman That openly discussed the topics of segregation and racial discrimination, …show more content…

Due to her hometown and her parents, she was able to find inspiration for her novels. Nelle Harper Lee was born April 28, 1926 in Monroeville Alabama (104). Harper Lee’s Father was Amasa Coleman and her mother was Frances Finch Lee. Lee’s father was a lawyer and like the child protagonist Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird, her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, once defended two black men, a father and son, who were accused of murdering a white store clerk (286). Harper Lee was young her neighbors had summer visits from Truman Capote, a future writer and a possible inspiration for a character in her book To Kill a Mockingbird. Truman Capote was a close friend may have been the inspiration for the character “Dill” in her first novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”(104). According to Marianne M. Moates “As a child, Harper Lee was ‘a rough ‘n’ tough tomboy…. She had short, cropped hair, wore coveralls, went barefoot, and could talk mean like a boy” (103). This tomboy like nature caused …show more content…

Harper Lee’s first novel To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. The novel about racial discrimination and segregation in the south made Harper Lee a hero in many people's eyes, because she was able to openly write about the problems that plagued our nation. To Kill a Mockingbird is told through the eyes of narrator Scout Finch and her brother Jem who are children growing up in Maycomb, Alabama. The novel tells the story of how the children, along with their summer friend Dill, become entranced with the idea of catching a glimpse of an unseen neighbor Boo Radley. Meanwhile, their father Atticus Finch, an attorney, decides to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell. Even though Tom is proven innocent, he is still convicted and later killed when trying to escape from jail. After the trail Jen and Scout become the targets of Bob Ewell, the father of Mayella, who then tries to kill them on the way home from school on Halloween night, but Boo Radley-who the children have never seen-shows up to save them, killing Bob in the process (287). Harper Lee’s Second novel is Go Set a Watchman and it is a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird published in 2015. The sequel continues with Scout, now a grown woman going by the name of Jean Louise, taking her crippled father back to her

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