This week we have started To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I was definitely interested to start this book because I had high hopes that it would be better than Huck Finn. It delivered...
My first impression of this book was that it is long.. and the words are small, but in terms of content, I really like it. Scout as the narrator provides a juvenile approach to such a serious matter. The setting of this story, rural Alabama during the Depression is very familiar to me because my grandmother grew up in that time in the exact same setting. Obviously race played a role in my grandma's experience, but I can picture the story none the less. I also really enjoyed the progression of Jem as a character in this fist section. He started out playing a game to mock Boo Radley. As the chapters went on, on pg. 63, he began to understand Boo a little better and even cried when he realized that Mr. Radley filled the tree with cement to cut Boo off from the outside world. I appreciated Jem's character development and I am excited to see where it is going during the rest of the novel.
One of the most important lines of this first section that we were assigned to read comes from Atticus as it becomes a central theme. He said to Scout, “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.” I really love this quote. It reminds me of a similar saying that parents everywhere say, "Don't judge a book by its cover". They just mean that everyone lives life differently and there are always things that they don't know about people. I think that Atticus's words to Scout are important to remember not only throughout the book, but through life as well.
My character was Atticus. I really like him thus far. He obviously is going to play an important part throughout the rest of the novel. I really enjoy his parenting style as he is honest with his children, but he does have rules. He tries to be supportive, while still being in charge. The quotation above is one of my favorite Atticus lines, as it really shows how he tries to parent his children. One of the other great examples is when Atticus is talking to his brother Jack, he says, " Scout's got to learn to keep her head and learn soon, with what's in store for her these next few months"(Lee 88). Scout goes on to realize that her father wanted her to here everything that he said. I really think this quotation describes the Atticus seen through the first 9 chapters because he is a caring, honest father who is only looking out for his children's best interests in mind.
In the class discussion about To Kill a Mockingbird, I was really intrigued by our conversation about Jem and his guilt surrounding Boo Radley. I felt like everyone had very interesting and insightful takes on that portion of the novel. I also enjoyed the conversation about the presence of Racism and Satire throughout the novel. I am interested to see how Harper Lee continues to add the social commentary into the novel.
Questions that I would like to explore in the next discussion are:
Did Harper Lee chose to write this book because of something similar that happened in her own life?
I picked this one because I read a small biography of Harper Lee and it said that To Kill a Mockingbird was sort of an autobiography of sorts as she was such a private person with the public. I also know that her father was a lawyer. I would like to know if she had her own Boo Radley in her childhood. Understanding the author's motives in writing often makes it easier for me as a reader to understand.
Do Scout and Jem represent differing perspective of America, similarly to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer?
Even in the first 9 chapters of the novel, it is easy to tell that Jem and Scout are drastically different characters though they were both raised in the same household by Atticus and Calpurnia. I know that Scout is generally younger than Jem so of course she does not act as maturely as he does. That being said, it is not just maturity, it is honestly a completely different mindset and I just think that it is fascinating.
