To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee (PDF-Summary-Review-Online Reading-Download)

TitleTo Kill a Mockingbird
AuthorHarper Lee
Year of PublicationJune 1960
GenresNovel
LanguageEnglish
File FormatPDF
Number of Pages285
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To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by American author Harper Lee. It was published in June 1960 and was an immediate success. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. To Kill a Mockingbird has become a classic of modern American literature; a year after its release, it won the Pulitzer Prize. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee’s observations about her family, her neighbors, and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was ten years old.

To Kill a Mockingbird Summary

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 unconventional girl who is between six and nine years old during the course of the novel. She is raised with her brother, Jeremy Atticus (“Jem”), by her widowed father, Atticus Finch. He is a prominent lawyer who encourages his children to be empathetic and fair. In particular, he tells 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 is confronted by a mob attempting to lynch his client but refuses to abandon him. Scout unknowingly diffuses the situation. Although Atticus presents a defense that gives a more plausible interpretation of the evidence (that Mayella was attacked by her father, Bob Ewell), Tom is convicted and later murdered while trying to escape custody. One character compares his death to “the senseless killing of songbirds,” paralleling Atticus’s saying about the nightingale.

Meanwhile, the children enact their own miniature drama of prejudice and superstition as they develop an interest in Arthur (“Boo”) Radley, a reclusive neighbor who is a local legend. They have their own ideas about him and can’t resist the lure of trespassing on Radley’s property. Their speculations thrive on the dehumanization perpetuated by their elders. Atticus, however, reprimands them and tries to encourage a more sensitive attitude. Boo makes his presence felt indirectly through a series of benevolent acts and finally intervenes when Bob Ewell attacks Jem and Scout. Boo kills Ewell, but Heck Tate, the sheriff, believes it is better to say that Ewell’s death occurred when he fell on his own knife, thus preventing the shy Boo from receiving unwanted attention. Scout agrees, pointing out that doing otherwise would be “like shooting a mockingbird.”

To Kill a Mockingbird Review

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, “To Kill a Mockingbird” takes readers to the roots of human behavior: innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hate, humor and pathos. Now with more than 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional history written by a young woman from Alabama has universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book as a simple love story. Today it is considered a masterpiece of American literature.

About the Author

Nelle Harper Lee is known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, her only major work. In 1999, it was voted “Best Novel of the Century” in a poll by Library Journal. Ms. Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature in 2007. Her father was a lawyer who served in the Alabama state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate, Truman Capote. After completing To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee accompanied Capote to Holcomb, Kansas, to assist him in researching his bestselling book, In Cold Blood. Since the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has granted very few requests for interviews or public appearances and has published no other novels.

To Kill a Mockingbird PDF

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