Transcript To Kill a Mocking Bird

Honors Language Arts 10
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Historical Background
Course Target: I can read to understand and
analyze a variety of short stories, non fiction, novels,
technical selections, and classical works of merit.
Harper Lee
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Childhood
– Born on April 28th, 1926 in a small town
called Monroeville, Alabama which is
south of Montgomery and near Jackson.
– Her father was a lawyer
– She loved to read
– Was five years old when the Scottsboro
Trials began.
– The Great Depression and the Scottsboro
Trials influenced her writing.
Harper Lee
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Then in 1960….
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Now….
Harper Lee
Ever heard of Truman Capote?
One of Lee’s childhood friends was Truman Capote, the
author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Rumor has it that it was Truman Capote who urged her to
write.
Education
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Graduated high school and attended an
all-female college called Huntingdon
College in Montgomery
Pursued a law degree at the University of
Alabama
Also studied one year at Oxford
University, but dropped out to write!
In the 1950s Harper Lee worked as a
reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines in
New York City while she pursued writing.
CREATION OF
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
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In 1957 Miss Lee submitted the
manuscript of her novel To Kill a
Mockingbird to the J. B. Lippincott
Company.
Published on July 11, 1960, her only
published book.
Who is Harper Lee?
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Harper Lee prefers to keep
her life private; she does
not give interviews and
very little is known about
her today.
She has only published 3
short articles since her
novel
Harper Lee’s cousin,
Richard Williams, asked the
recluse when she’s going to
come out with another
book. “And she said,
‘Richard, when you’re at
the top, there’s only one
way to go’”
Autobiographical Elements
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Atticus Finch is based on Lee’s own father,
Amasa, a lawyer.
The narrator, Scout is apparently modeled after
Lee herself as a child.
The fictional town of Maycomb re-creates the
author’s hometown of Monroeville.
Home town neighbor Sue Ann Pressley says that
the town’s old courthouse now draws 20,000
visitors a year and that “the old town square Lee
explored barefoot and in overalls still stands, with
the red-brick courthouse with the clock chimes
and the hardware stores.”
RELEVANCE TODAY
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TKM is the 4th most taught book in the nation.
Won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1961
a recent study of best-sellers found that, between
1995 and 1975, To Kill a Mockingbird was the
seventh best-selling book in the United States,
and the third best-selling novel.
In a 1991 “Survey of Lifetime Reading Habits”
that was conducted found that “among the books
mentioned by its 5,000 respondents, Harper Lee’s
TKM was second only to the Bible in being ‘most
often cited as making a difference’ in people’s
lives”
RELEVANCE TODAY
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"Although occasionally faulted as melodramatic, To Kill
a Mockingbird is widely regarded as one of the most
sensitive and revealing portraits of the American
South in contemporary literature."
Edgar H. Shuster is quoted in World Literature
Criticism as saying, "The achievement of Harper Lee
is not that she has written another novel about race
prejudice, but rather that she has placed race
prejudice in a perspective which allows us to see it as
an aspect of a larger thing; as something that arises
from phantom contacts, from fear and lack of
knowledge or 'education' that one gains through
learning what people are really like when you 'finally
see them.'"
Her writing is not too subtle
to see clearly her use of…
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Imagery
Symbolism
Irony
Metaphor
Allusion
Theme
Character development