Right now I’m diving into the beloved American novel To Kill a Mockingbird with my high
school American Lit class. While often taught in 9th grade or even
to middle schoolers, I like digging into this book with 11th and 12th
graders. Though the basic story and language level make it an easier read for
older students, I find the story’s complex characters and themes better suited
to their more mature minds.
So today, I thought it would be neat to delve into some of the
novel’s historical and authorial background. I hope you enjoy coming along for
the ride!
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| Harper Lee when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2007. White House photo by Eric Draper - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/11/images/20071105-1_d-0243-3-515h.html, Public Domain |
Harper
Lee’s Life
First of all, who was Harper Lee, this mysterious, somewhat
reclusive author who won a Pulitzer for her first novel and then never
published another till 2015, the year before she died?
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| 1960 title page of To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee Booktitle, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons |
She was born Nelle Harper Lee in 1926 but chose to drop the
“Nelle” for her writing name. Lee grew up in the small Alabama town of
Monroeville, a place not unlike the Maycomb of To Kill a Mockingbird, and while she denied basing the story on her
own life, her father, like Atticus Finch, was a lawyer.
Harper Lee never married and spent much of her life living
with her sister, Alice, moving between Monroeville and New York City. She loved
British magazines and college football, and despite earning astoundingly high
royalties from To Kill a Mockingbird
throughout her life, she lived frugally, shunning computers and cell phones and
doing laundry at a laundromat.
Lee was a painstaking writer, often spending six to twelve
hours a day at her typewriter while composing Mockingbird and only producing one page of text. Her first version
of the manuscript was rejected by her editor, though it would be released as
the controversial Go Set a Watchman
only a few years ago. However, the editor saw some promise in the manuscript
and urged her to write the childhood story hinted there—and thus became To Kill a Mockingbird.
Real life
Inspiration for Tom Robinson’s Trial
While To Kill a
Mockingbird is fictional, as with many of the best stories much of what
happens is inspired by real life, especially Tom Robinson’s extremely
prejudiced trial. For one thing, as a child Lee witnessed her lawyer father
defend a black father and son accused of murder—and lose, leading to the men’s
execution. Her father never took another criminal case.
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| Historical Marker honoring the Scottsboro Boys, by Brian Stansberry (photographer) - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60294404 |
Perhaps even more closely related, the “Scottsboro Boys
Trials” happened in Alabama in the 1930s, when Lee was still a little girl. Nine
black boys were accused of raping two white girls after a group of white boys
started a fight with them. Some of the accused boys were as young as twelve,
and the girls’ testimony gradually became obviously unreliable, with one
completely abandoning her earlier claim. However, the racially-biased jury
still convicted most of the boys and sentenced seven of them to death, though
through a lengthy process of appeals most were eventually either pardoned or
escaped. Today Scottsboro, Alabama, holds a museum and cultural center
dedicated to these boys.
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| Atticus and Tom Robinson in court, scene from the 1960 film. By Moni3 - Transfered from en:Image 14 February 2008, Public Domain https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3560213 |
Witnessing these highly biased trials under all-white juries
must have provided Harper Lee with fodder for the famous courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, when, despite
Atticus Finch proving Tom Robinson literally could not have committed the
crime, the jury still convicts him as guilty.
Current
Controversies
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that a book written in the 1960s
from a child’s perspective and yet about racism and rape should raise some
objections. To Kill a Mockingbird has
been banned in schools at times, though at present it is still required reading
in most. While I have come to love the story, I am bothered by certain aspects
of it, both the common use of the “n-word” (though Atticus always disapproves)
and how, in general, casual racism is endemic in the little town and even the
narrator’s perspective: the black characters aren’t given much voice, and
Atticus insists that his highly-prejudiced neighbors are still good people and
entitled to their opinions. Controversy escalated when Go Set a Watchman was published in 2015, as this novel featuring an
adult Scout showed Atticus as a set-in-his-ways white conservative who strongly
opposed integration and the Civil Rights movement. (Whether Lee actually wanted
this manuscript published is a whole other story and hard to discern, since she
was so near the end of her life at the time.)
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| Old Monroe County Courthouse, inspiration for the courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird. By Redditaddict69 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71334829 |
With all its flaws and foibles, however, I think To Kill a Mockingbird is still worth
reading—ideally alongside other, African-American voices, both past and
present, to present a fuller picture of this time in our country’s history. I
love the unique perspective of a child, in all her willfulness and innocence,
in viewing the harsh realities of her beloved Southern town; the beauty of
language and character development in the way the story weaves together; the
example of Atticus, imperfect as he is, holding staunchly to what he believes
is right, regardless of cost; and even, for the time and place, the sensitivity
with which Lee does portray her black characters, especially when Jem and Scout
visit Calpurnia’s church and get a glimpse into her world beyond being their
hired help. It’s a story that tends to tenderize my heart and make me think
more deeply, and I hope that will be true for my students too as we read it
together this spring and dig into this story together.
So, did you grow up loving To
Kill a Mockingbird? Do you think it should still be required reading in
schools? What aspects of its background do you find most interesting or
surprising? Please comment and share!
Kiersti Giron holds a life-long
passion for history and historical fiction. She loves to write stories that
show the intersection of past and present, explore relationships that bridge
cultural divides, and probe the healing Jesus can bring out of brokenness.
Kiersti has been published in several magazine and won 2013 and 2018 Genesis
Awards – Historical for her novels Beneath
a Turquoise Sky and Fire in My Heart.
An English teacher and member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Kiersti
loves learning and growing with other writers penning God's story into theirs,
as well as blogging at www.kierstigiron.com. She lives in California with her beloved husband, Anthony, and their two kitties.
