To Kill a Mockingbird

By Harper Lee

Author Information• Harper Lee (distant relative of General Robert. E.

Lee), daughter of Frances Finch and Amasa Coleman Lee was born near the Florida panhandle in Monroeville, Alabama, on April 28, 1926. She lived next door to Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood. Capote, her lifelong friend and literary colleague, spent his summers in Monroeville. Lee attended Huntington College from 1944-1945. Then she attended the University of Alabama Law School just as her sister and her father had. She studied for a year at Oxford in England. She ended her education in 1950 without a degree.

Author Info (cont.)• She relocated in NYC and after working in the airline industry,

settled on writing which left her with a lack of funds and living in a cold-water flat. Her father grew ill, and she had to return frequently to Alabama. She entered 3 short pieces of fiction to a literary agent for scrutiny. She then developed one of these into her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1960. She modeled the character of Dill after Capote, Atticus after her father, and shaped Maycomb after her hometown. The tree discussed in the novel actually existed near Lee’s elementary school until disease took it. In 1962, Gregory Peck starred in the black and white movie version. Much debate exists as to whether Harper Lee actually wrote the novel. Some suggest that Truman Capote was actually the author and allowed his lifelong friend to take the credit.

Historical context• The setting of To Kill a Mockingbird is Maycomb,

Alabama. (Maycomb is a fictional county). It takes place during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Maycomb is a farm community. The impact of the stock market crash on the farmers is drastic. However, since everyone, including professionals, depended on the farmers to pay for their goods and services, the entire community suffered. The stock market crash of 1929 paralyzed the nation’s economy. Spending dwindled, factories and stores closed, and consumption of farm products declined. At the height of the Depression (1933), about 13 million Americans had no jobs, many had only part time jobs, and more than 750,000 farmers had lost their land.

Historical Context (cont.)• In 1932, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)

defeated Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt promoted a program called the New Deal. This program created government agencies which provided jobs and the Farm Credit Administration (FCA) which extended credit to farmers. His New Deal marked a milestone in the American Government’s history. Never before had the government taken such an active role in the nation’s economic affairs, a role they continue to perform today. The Depression ended in the late 1930s because of the need for war materials at the beginning of World War II. Increased production required many new jobs, which decreased unemployment and put more money into circulation.

Social Context• Although the Emancipation Proclamation (the

document which freed black slaves) had been signed in 1863, and the South had lost the Civil war, not until almost a hundred years later were efforts begun to obtain civil rights for the nation’s blacks. Because of this, during the time of the novel, blacks in the South, who had not been slaves for over sixty years, were still considered “second-class” citizens. Segregation of blacks and whites still existed, and many blacks held jobs such as field hands, housemaids, and cooks. Lee portrays the structure of this type of lifestyle in the novel.

Themes• Reaching Adulthood: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Prejudice: ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Racial: ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Social: ___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

• Sexual: ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Man’s inhumanity to man:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Smaller Themes • Education :________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Superstition: _______________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Religion: __________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Courage: __________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________