If you’re going to write just one book, it’s a pretty good outcome if that novel — To Kill A Mockingbird — goes on to win the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, become the twentieth century’s most widely read American novel, and which still sells about a million copies annually today. Harper Lee (1926–2016) did just that (OK quibblers, she did publish a second novel in 2015, Go Set A Watchman, which was written before Mockingbird and touted as a prequel but this was essentially a first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird).
Harper Lee (1926–2016) grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, and had a lawyer father who once defended two black men, a father and son, who had been accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both men were hanged. So you see, the young Nelle (Harper was her middle name and was only used as her pen name) had ample material with which to work in her novel about the irrationality of attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as seen through children’s eyes.
To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. The protagonist is Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch, an intelligent and courageous young girl who ages from six to nine years old during the course of the novel. She is raised with her brother, Jeremy (“Jem”), by their widowed father, Atticus Finch, who is a prominent lawyer. Atticus encourages his children to be empathetic and just, notably telling them that it is “a sin to kill a mockingbird,” alluding to the fact that the birds are innocent and harmless.
When Tom Robinson, one of the town’s black residents, is falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman, Atticus agrees to defend him despite threats from the community. At one point he faces a mob intent on lynching his client but refuses to abandon him. Scout unwittingly diffuses the situation. Although Atticus presents a defence that gives a more plausible interpretation of the evidence—that Mayella was attacked by her father, Bob Ewell—Tom is convicted, and he is later killed while trying to escape custody.
Here’s an extract from the scene just mentioned, in which Scout diffuses the situation with the mob (led by Walter Cunningham).
“Hey, Mr. Cunningham.”
The man did not hear me, it seemed.
“Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How’s your entailment gettin‘ along?”
Mr. Walter Cunningham’s legal affairs were well known to me; Atticus had once described them at length. The big man blinked and hooked his thumbs in his overall straps. He seemed uncomfortable; he cleared his throat and looked away. My friendly overture had fallen flat.
Mr. Cunningham wore no hat, and the top half of his forehead was white in contrast to his sun-scorched face, which led me to believe that he wore one most days. He shifted his feet, clad in heavy work shoes.
“Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?” I began to sense the futility one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance.
“I go to school with Walter,” I began again. “He’s your boy, ain’t he? Ain’t he, sir?”
Mr. Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know me, after all.
“He’s in my grade,” I said, “and he does right well. He’s a good boy,” I added, “a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won’t you?”
Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. Mr. Cunningham displayed no interest in his son, so I tackled his entailment once more in a last-ditch effort to make him feel at home.
“Entailments are bad,” I was advising him, when I slowly awoke to the fact that I was addressing the entire aggregation. The men were all looking at me, some had their mouths half-open. Atticus had stopped poking at Jem: they were standing together beside Dill. Their attention amounted to fascination. Atticus’s mouth, even, was half-open, an attitude he had once described as uncouth. Our eyes met and he shut it.
“Well, Atticus, I was just sayin‘ to Mr. Cunningham that entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time sometimes… that you all’d ride it out together…” I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy I had committed. Entailments seemed all right enough for living-room talk.
I began to feel sweat gathering at the edges of my hair; I could stand anything but a bunch of people looking at me. They were quite still.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
Atticus said nothing. I looked around and up at Mr. Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders.
“I’ll tell him you said hey, little lady,” he said.
Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. “Let’s clear out,” he called. “Let’s get going, boys.”
