Essay on To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

It’s interesting to see the ways different authors depict how a character matures. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird we can easily see how she chose to do it. The novel is set in Alabama in the 1930’s, while black vs. white racism was a big issue and problem for many. Atticus is the father of Scout and Jem, young children who witness the discrimination first hand when their father, a white man, defends a black man in court. Lee does a great job developing the characters; especially the narrator, Jean Louise Finch (Scout). Scout’s thoughts, conversations, and actions, illustrate that she’s emotionally maturing from the innocent child that she was.

This essay proves that graduating students in Ontario should only study literature in a Grade 12 English course. While good writers exist in all cultures, Ontario students should only study literature written by Canadian writers. This is because all Ontario students should become familiar with literature from our province. Three reasons for this are; the need to focus on our own Canadian culture and despite being surrounded by many other cultures, the need to promote and establish our own writers is there, as well as the need to encourage younger Canadian authors.

Basic literacy is the ability to read and write, my literacy skills began to develop while I was a small child. It all started with the bedtime stories my mother would read to be. It wasn’t until I got to school that it developed even more as teachers began to teach me how to read and write. I feel that in order to be successful you need to learn how to read and right, that’s why I took pride in learning it. I’m glad that I learned that at a very early age. I notice that to get a good grade on my writings I had to write how my teachers wanted me to write things. In the long run it did pay off because I got good grades on my papers. Obviously you can see that I had to

The book "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a story of life in an Alabama town in the 30's. The narrator, Jean Louise Finch, or Scout, is writing of a time when she was young, and the book is in part the record of a childhood, believed to be Harper Lee’s, the author of the book..

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

According to “The Demise of Disciplinary Authority” by Louis Menand academic literary studies is more important than one may think. Menand claims that there is two background categories condition for the academic. The first one is “that knowledge accumulates brick by brick.” The second is the discipline of literary studies. The author goes on to say that the literacy studies have existed since 1960. There was a time in society when literature was not known as its own genre. The author wants the readers to learn and understand that literature is itself genre. Literature studies can be understood as an independent discipline. An author named Levine argues in this article that the future does lie in interdisciplinary work. There was a research done that showed that academic literacy studies became disconnected from the institutional structure it inhabited. The American university was covering up and enjoying a pergola of rapid expansion. The challenge of literacy studies was that it could have simply been put in the existing system.

What it Means to Kill a Mocking Bird: an in depth analysis of the morals in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

As children grow up, they open their eyes to the harsh truths in the world around them that they once did not understand or question. This is experienced by the main characters of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The story is of a girl called Scout and her older brother, Jem, who go through the trials of growing up in the fictional small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. Racism is rampant in the mindset of the townspeople, shown when the children’s lawyer father, Atticus, takes the case of an obviously innocent African-American man and they convict him in their hearts before the trial even starts. Through this all, we can see the theme of loss of innocence in the children. Lee uses characterization to portray

Richard E. Miller, the author of The Dark Night of the Soul, is an English professor/executive director of the Plan-genre Writing Center at Rutgers University. He studies the English curriculum in the U.S and questions if it is successful or a dying art. This is evident in The Dark night of the Soul,

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”. Discuss this quote from Atticus in relation to 3 characters from the novel.

In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird a major theme is the loss of innocence. Whether from emotional abuse, racial prejudice or learning, Boo, Tom, and Scout all lose their innocence in one sense or another. The prejudice that each character endures leads to their loss. Through the responses of Boo, Tom, and Scout, Harper Lee shows how each character responded differently to their loss of innocence.

The cruel nature and intentions of people can either hurt or harm individuals or it can bring about resilience and determination. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee revealed that humans often have other motives in life; some are born to be evil in nature, some are naturally innocent and then there are some that are born to protect the innocent. Lee utilized a variety of symbols and themes that correlated with each other and thus had the ability to create questions in the minds of the readers. Are humans calculatedly cruel or is there some moral good in each of us? The impiety of a few can create a movement, imprison the innocent or reveal the sincerity of others.

Courage is the quality of mind that enables one to face danger with confidence, resolution, and gain a firm control of oneself. Many of the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird showed courage in their own way. Courage can come in many different forms: physical, mental, emotional and moral. Courage is not the only main theme displayed in To Kill a Mockingbird; prejudice and education are also very important themes exhibited throughout the progression of the novel. Through the eyes of Scout Finch, a bright, sensitive and intelligent little girl, these themes of the novel are explored in great depth.

Over the past month, we have been studying the concept of reading and writing in different communities. To assess this, we have read two different texts. Richard Rodriguez’s the achievement of desire”, from his autobiography “Hunger of Memory”; and Lucille McCarthy’s “A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing across the Curriculum” from “Research in the Teaching of English”. Both answer key questions regarding what it takes to become a great reader and writer, however, from the reading that I have done, each one only answers one part of the question. Rodriguez’s main focus is in the aspect of reading, whereas McCarthy mainly focuses on the writing portion. Both do a decent job of analyzing and putting forth a view of how they believe a person can best perform in these environments. This then allows us to use their concepts and create our own version, based on their points of view. But why should we care? Most people at this level of academia will have developed a system of writing that works for them, and will have a difficult time breaking from it if they’re process doesn’t meet the criteria that Rodriguez, and McCarthy put forth. The reason it’s so important is because of implications these ideas have. Both authors put forth concepts that are indirectly related to one another and that are highly beneficial to all who will apply them. They will force you to conform to new environments in order to succeed, this in turn will make you more

The topic of William Shakespeare has become quite controversial over the role that he, and his plays, have in our English curriculum. William Shakespeare is, and forever will be, “an influence on the English language more than any other writer in history” (HISTORY). With many well known plays such as Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest, William shakespeare expresses the use of many literary skills and and styles in which is taught in today’s English curriculum.