From Fred J Henzel

Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird has received wide acclaim since its first publication in 1960, and to date has been in constant circulation for 52 years. One of the reasons for its “classic” status is Lee’s fearless exploration of racial tension in the American South and the injustice of social codes in the course of an incongruously light-toned loss-of-innocence story. ONE MORE SENTENCE

The narrator, Scout (Jean Louise) Finch, relates a series of stories from her recent youth in Maycomb Alabama, which foreshadow later aspects of the trial and conviction of a black man, Tom Robinson, by a white jury.

She begins by describing her family; her father Atticus Finch, a lawyer with a strong moral code and a drive to educate, her older brother Jem (Jeremy), uncle Jack, and aunt Alexandra. The Finch’s cook and general mother figure Calpurnia. She then reminisces about meeting Dill (Charles Baker) Harris- based on Harper Lee’s real-life childhood friend Truman Capote- for the first time. Dill is a creative youth who is fascinated by the town’s local version of “the old witch at the end of the street”, Boo (Arthur) Radley.

Boo has been a shut-in, kept virtually prisoner in the family house first by his father and then by his brother, as unjust punishment for a teenaged prank. Because he is never seen by the townsfolk, he has “outsider” status, and wild rumors are made as to his violent and deranged nature. Jem, Scout, and Dill make up and act out some Boo Radley stories of their own. Eventually, this leads to increasingly daring acts– an attempt to leave notes on Boo’s windowsill and, later, to peer into the house. Nathan Radley fires a gun at a suspected prowler when he hears the children, causing them to flee and Jem to lose his pants by catching them on a fence. Returning at night, Jem finds the pants mended and neatly folded. The children begin to find small gifts in a hole in a tree near the Radley house, until Nathan plugs it up with cement. Further establishment of Boo Radley as a misunderstood outsider is related as the children watch a house burning down in the winter. Too awed by the spectacle to feel cold, Scout returns home with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders without knowing how she came by it. Her father tells her that it was Boo Radley that put it there.

Years later, Scout is nearing the end of girlhood when her father takes on the case of Tom Robinson, who is accused of the rape and beating of Mayella Ewell, of the town’s infamous Ewell family. While in the course of the trial it is made clear that Tom could not have inflicted the bruises on Mayella with his crippled left arm, and in fact has positive character witness from his white employer, Tom has outsider status and is persecuted, as Boo Radley had been. Scout and Jem, watching the courtroom proceedings from the black gallery, react with shock and disgust, but their father later explains that the length of time the jury came in declaring the man guilty at least showed progress being made.

While Jem’s loss of innocence at the revelation of society’s dark unspoken rules turns him against his town, Scout manages to remain positive and believe in a basic goodness of people, a faith which is borne out when Mayella’s father Bob Ewell attacks the children to strike back against Atticus for defending Tom. When Jem breaks his arm fighting with Bob, Boo Radley comes to their rescue, killing Bob in the process. Sheriff Heck Tate covers for Boo Radley, unwilling to persecute him for a heroic act. This final redemptive act closes the story with hope for society’s acceptance of outsiders.