To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Author: Harper Lee

Name of the book: To Kill a Mockingbird

Editorial: Arrow Books

Number of pages: 324 pages

Publication date: May 23rd, 2006. ( Special edition for the 50th anniversary)

My Grade: 8/10

Summary: The story takes place during three years, from 1933 to 1935, of the Great Depression in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, the seat of Maycomb County. It focuses on six-year-old Jean Louise Finch, whose called Scout thorough the book, who lives with her older brother, Jeremy, called also Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout become friends with a boy named Dill, who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt each summer. The three children are terrified yet fascinated by their neighbor, the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo, and few of them have seen him for many years. The children feed one another's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. After two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone leaves them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, he never appears in person.

Judge Taylor appoints Atticus to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus's actions, calling him a "nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. This danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's perspective.

Atticus does not want Jem and Scout to be present at Tom Robinson's trial. No seat is available on the main floor, so by invitation of the Rev. Sykes, Jem, Scout, and Dill watch from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that the accusers—Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, the town drunk—are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella made sexual advances toward Tom, and that her father caught her and beat her. Despite significant evidence of Tom's innocence, the jury convicts him either way and for that reason, Jem's faith in justice becomes badly shaken, as is Atticus', when the helpless Tom is shot and killed while trying to escape from prison.

Despite Tom's conviction, Bob Ewell is humiliated by the events of the trial, Atticus explaining that he "destroyed [Ewell's] last shred of credibility at that trial." Ewell vows revenge, spitting in Atticus' face, trying to break into the judge's house, and menacing Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks the defenseless Jem and Scout while they walk home on a dark night after the school Halloween pageant. Jem suffers a broken arm in the struggle, but amid the confusion someone comes to the children's rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout realizes that he is Boo Radley.

Sheriff Tate arrives and discovers that Bob Ewell has died during the fight. The sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and ethics of charging Jem (whom Atticus believes to be responsible) or Boo (whom Tate believes to be responsible). Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell simply fell on his own knife. Boo asks Scout to walk him home, and after she says goodbye to him at his front door he disappears again. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective, and regrets that they had never repaid him for the gifts he had given them.

Scout then goes back home to Atticus and stays up with him for a while in Jem's room. Soon Atticus takes her to bed and tucks her in, before leaving to go back to Jem.

Full opinion.

This book is just the perfect way to see how racism was on that period, through the eyes of two innocent but smart kids, at first it’s just like both of them know that there is a division between white people and black people, but every moment that they witness how their father act and how he treats every person with respect and tolerance, they start to see the injustice in the case I which their father, Atticus is working on.

I liked the story line in which the three kids try to make Boo Ridley get out of the house; it frightened me a little bit, especially when Jem, the older brother, saw that shadow moving, or when they hear someone’s laughter inside the house. Those moments I was so scared, that at the end of the book, when it’s Boo who saves the kids from the Ewell’s, I was so relieved that he wasn’t bad at all he just never left his house. And maybe that’s the thing about this book, misinterpretations and judging someone or a group of people based on that they are different from the others, and how wrong we are for doing that, because the ones that made us feel scared, like Boo Ridley for me, was the one who truly had good intentions with the kids, he wanted to play and ultimately save them, and in the case with Tom Robinson, he was an innocent pure soul, who worked everyday of his life, who always treat with respect everyone he crossed paths with was just judged because he lived in a society and in a period in which black people didn’t have a voice, because even telling his side off the story, almost no one believed in him. And that’s the sad truth we judge not based on what someone has done or not, but on the fear we have from them and the difference between them. And that should never happen again. We should be fair, and like Atticus, a gentleman who respected and treated with acceptance everyone even those who did not deserve it.

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