Harper Lee and to Kill a Mockingbird

In the opening pages of her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee wrote these words: “There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with…but it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.” Lee alludes to the seemingly inadequate reassurance that United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt provided during his inauguration speech at the onset of the Great Depression, while also describing the melancholy and hopelessness that many citizens felt. This sentiment, however, was not just confined to the United States—the impact of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 had also reverberated throughout Latin America, and

I did not expect that I would like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee as much as I do. Written from the perspective of Scout, a young girl in the 1930’s, this book takes a look at many issues, including racism and sexism, all from the innocent eyes of a child. This book reveals many of the issues and struggles faced during the Great Depression. So far, this book is excellently written.

Caring and noticeable is Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird take readers to the source of humans action, through faults and experiment, kindness and trouble, hatred and love, and the struggle between blacks and whites. Atticus Finch is a lawyer and a single parent at Maycomb town in the 1930’s. He was set by the judge to defend the guy who was charged with raping a white woman: Tom Robinson(Black man). Friends and neighbors of Atticus Finch were not happy with the fight Atticus was putting up to defend the man who was charged for raping a white woman. Not only does Atticus enjoy being a lawyer, Atticus even enjoy being a father of Jem and Scout. Atticus Finch is a excellent character who is known for certain accomplishment and superior. He is known for many stuff. Atticus Finch has remained a hero in modern days for american literature for decades and an honorable figure due to his honesty as a parent, a lawyer, and a respectable community members.

Imagine a world without law, surrounded by anarchism and people who can do whatever they please. A world without law would result in a corrupt and unfair society, ruled by the authoritative elite. In the narrative, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, law is a major theme in society that controls the actions of the people and the destiny’s of the wrongdoers. A world without law is a world of chaos and calamity; therefore, laws are established to keep order and safety in the world that God created.

Throughout the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, author Harper Lee challenges the societal norms of gender roles, within the character “Jean Louise,” also referred to as her tomboy name “Scout.” Scout battles the society-defined roles in many ways throughout the text. Many factors lead to Scout redefining femininity, including Jem and Dill’s coming-of-age dilemma. An exploration of gender roles and inequality throughout the text and this time period will allow one to understand how Scout was able to overcome gender stereotyping.

In Harper Lee’s famous book, To Kill a Mockingbird, she alludes to the Great Depression many times. “… the crash hit them the hardest” (Lee 27). The crash Atticus is referring to is

The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee focuses on many themes but courage is mostly shown in the novel. In the novel, there are many examples where the characters have shown courage even when he/she knows that he/she is going to lose it. Atticus Finch is a great example of showing courage in the novel. He shows great courage because he defends a black man even though he knows he is going to lose the case. Another example of showing courage is Mrs. Dubose. She shows courage because she wants to break her morphine addiction even though she knows she is going to die. Boo Radley also shows courage in the novel when he comes out of isolation in order to save the children even though he knows he might be hurt into the spotlight. These three characters are the most important characters that will be featured about showing courage from the novel.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is set in the time of The Great Depression, and shows several families that are faced with poverty. The Great Depression started with the stock market crash in 1929, between 1930 and 1934, one million farmers lost their homes and jobs. The Great Depression was making everyone poor and inflation was high. Many characters in the novel are extremely poor, such as the Cunninghams, so setting the the novel in the time of The Great Depression helps Lee to show differences between different classes.

According to Jessie Wand, who was eighteen at the start of the depression, families began to deteriorate and break off form each other. Using her life as an example, Jessie discussed her experiences with the Great Depression. Moving to Austin in the middle of the depression, she met her late husband, Lester Wand, who made a living selling steel. Unfortunately, Mr. Wand suffered a very difficult time during the depression, because steel became not as easily available. Jessie’s husband, instead, resorted to selling plastics and anything else that he could possibly get his hands on which caused him to be on the road for four nights out of the week. At the time, Jessie enjoyed the solidarity, but in hindsight, she wishes she could have seen her husband more often. Many situations like this occurred during the Great Depression. According to L. B. Blackmon, still very young at the time of the depression, his mother and father worked and “bent over backwards” to make it certain that their family had what it needed. Although, what they had wasn’t much, the Blackmon family survived and appreciated each other and what they had. In agreement with Jessie Wand, this disastrous situation made it necessary for most mothers to work and bring in a second income which left the children unsupervised all day. Considering the time period, this was especially true for blacks and Hispanics due to the fact that they were not allowed to obtain the same types of jobs that white people could. Breaking down of families becomes incredibly evident with the start of the Great Depression. Hunger, poverty, homelessness all play major roles in affecting the family as a whole. At the time of the depression, Eleanor Tyler, young like Blackmon, was forced into adulthood at around the age of 11 due to the fact that her mother was placed in a temporary sanitarium from grief of her husband’s

Lee grew up in the south in the early nineteen-hundreds. The people around her felt blacks were beneath whites and gave them many difficulties to put up with. This injustice was especially prominent in court cases, like the one Lee depicts in her novel. Though Harper Lee accepts that there is racism in the community, she reminds us all her own thoughts by giving advice to Scout that all the readers can take something away from: “‘As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it— whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash’”(Lee 224). Clearly, dealing with the injustices of trials at home inspired Lee to write her book and point out the problems we are turning a blind eye to in our own country. Using her personal background in the oppression of the south, Harper Lee shed light on the issue by depicting the issue in her remarkably well-written

Atticus Finch is a single father of two children, Jem and Scout. Atticus Finch isn't the same as the rest of the fathers. Atticus was a good role model to his children. Atticus Finch treated his children with care, estimate, and equality. He taught his children to be wise and have morals, as well as teaching them right against wrong. Atticus would try his best to do the best thing in order for his children to learn.

The Great Depression affected all aspects of life during the 1930s, but no group was more affected than African Americans. The book To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee about the Depression time period, helps the reader understand the gravity of the conditions in the 1930s, exposing the truth of how people lived in Southern towns. Scout Finch, the main character of the novel, asks her father, “‘Are we poor, Atticus?’ Atticus nodded. ‘We are indeed.’”

With economic turmoil marking the end of the Roaring Twenties, individuals across the United States began to fall into despair, wondering when their lives would ever return to normal. This turmoil also took root in Europe, shaking the very foundations of the fiscal world. To capture the abysmal state of many Americans, novels such as ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ gave considerable insight on how such a catastrophe affected the livelihoods of many. In ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, the Great Depression affected the characters’ morality, economic standpoint, and their ultimate decisions. To start, the economic struggle had influenced one’s feelings for the various factors in life, or their morality.

In the book to “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee there is one very important character in the book that is not present, the Mother of Jem and Scout. Their mother died when Jem was six and Scout was two. This is when Cal steps in to mother the children. Later on in the book Aunt Alexandra comes to live with them to help with Scouts becoming of a lady. Atticus their father tries’s his best to guide them in the right direction. Things would definitely be different if the Mother was still alive.

In the novel there are many signs that the Great Depression is in effect from setting, plot events, character dialog, and details in the story. The story takes place during the mid-1930s, the height of the Great Depression in the United States. Some events in the story also show the presence and influence of the Great Depression. One event is when Atticus Finch, an eminent lawyer and the father of Scout and Jem, is away for two weeks due to the state legislature calling an emergency meeting. The results of that meeting are told after stating the governor’s intentions, “The