To Kill a Mockingbird Essay - To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee


To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

(Born Nelle Harper Lee) American novelist.



Plot and Major Characters



Major Themes



Critical Reception


Principal Works

To Kill a Mockingbird (novel) 1960

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Adam Smykowski (essay date 1996)

SOURCE: Smykowski, Adam. “Symbolism and Racism in To Kill a Mockingbird.” In Readings on “To Kill a Mockingbird,” edited by Terry O'Neill, pp. 52-6. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 2000.

[In the following essay, originally published online in 1996 as “Symbolism in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird,” Smykowski analyzes Lee's use of symbolism to explore issues of racism in the novel.]

“I'd rather you shoot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” This is what Atticus Finch tells his children after they are given...

(The entire section is 1768 words.)

Dean Shackelford (essay date winter 1996-97)

SOURCE: Shackelford, Dean. “The Female Voice in To Kill a Mockingbird: Narrative Strategies in Film and Novel.” Mississippi Quarterly 50, no. 1 (winter 1996-97): 101-13.

[In the following essay, Shackelford compares To Kill a Mockingbird with its film adaptation in terms of representations of gender. Shackelford argues that, while the book's female narrator infuses the novel with a feminist perspective, the film's visual focus on the point of view of Scout's father undermines this feminist perspective.]


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Steven Lubet (essay date May 1999)

SOURCE: Lubet, Steven. “Reconstructing Atticus Finch.” Michigan Law Review 97, no. 6 (May 1999): 1339-62.

[In the following essay, Lubet questions the standard perception of Atticus Finch as a role model for lawyers. Lubet provides an analysis of the trial portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspective of today's legal defense methods and ethics, particularly in regard to rape trials.]


Atticus Finch.

No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession than the hero of Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.1 For nearly four...

(The entire section is 11295 words.)

Ann Althouse (essay date May 1999)

SOURCE: Althouse, Ann. “Reconstructing Atticus Finch? A Response to Professor Lubet.” Michigan Law Review 97, no. 6 (May 1999): 1363-69.

[In the following essay, Althouse responds to the essay “Reconstructing Atticus Finch,” by Steven Lubet. Althouse argues that Atticus is a model lawyer in the sense that he maintains the same high ethical standards in his personal life as he does in his capacity as a lawyer.]

“He's not an example, Dill. … He's the same in the courtroom as he is on the public streets.”1

In one of her childishly obtuse moments, Scout, the narrator of Harper Lee's To Kill a...

(The entire section is 2818 words.)

Rob Atkinson (essay date May 1999)

SOURCE: Atkinson, Rob. “Comment on Steven Lubet, ‘Reconstructing Atticus Finch.’” Michigan Law Review 97, no. 6 (May 1999): 1370-72.

[In the following essay, Atkinson responds to the essay “Reconstructing Atticus Finch,” by Steven Lubet. Atkinson argues that, taking To Kill a Mockingbird on its own “childishly simplistic” moral terms, Atticus Finch is certainly a role model. However, Atkinson concludes that the book is a less complex and morally challenging novel than it is given credit for.]

Professor Lubet has joined a growing list of revisionists who question Atticus's standing as the paragon of lawyerly virtue [in To Kill a...

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Patrick Chura (essay date spring 2000)

SOURCE: Chura, Patrick. “Prolepsis and Anachronism: Emmet Till and the Historicity of To Kill a Mockingbird.Southern Literary Journal 32, no. 2 (spring 2000): 1-26.

[In the following essay, Chura discusses the representation of race and justice in To Kill a Mockingbird in the historical context of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s.]

Though there is a strong consensus that To Kill a Mockingbird is deeply oriented within the history of the Depression era, no analysis has attempted to separate the historical conditions of the moment of the text's production in the mid 1950s from the historical present of the novel, the mid...

(The entire section is 11573 words.)

Joseph Crespino (essay date summer 2000)

SOURCE: Crespino, Joseph. “The Strange Career of Atticus Finch.” Southern Cultures 6, no. 2 (summer 2000): 9-29.

[In the following essay, Crespino examines popular and critical responses to the representation of race and justice in To Kill a Mockingbird between the years 1960 and 2000.]

Contemporary debates concerning race in America owe much to the 1960s when African Americans and other minority groups gained basic legal protections and rights of citizenship denied them in the century following Reconstruction. The current offspring of this movement is multiculturalism, a term that encompasses a range of progressive educational techniques, policy...

(The entire section is 7414 words.)

Tim Dare (essay date April 2001)

SOURCE: Dare, Tim. “Lawyers, Ethics, and To Kill a Mockingbird.Philosophy and Literature 25, no. 1 (April 2001): 127-41.

[In the following essay, Dare discusses the issue of moral responsibility in the legal profession in terms of ethical and moral philosophy, and evaluates whether or not the character of Atticus Finch serves as a positive role model for lawyers.]


Lawyers are widely thought to be callous, self-serving, devious, and indifferent to justice, truth, and the public good. The law profession could do with a hero, and some think Atticus Finch of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird fits the bill.1 Claudia...

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Susan Arpajian Jolley (essay date November 2002)

SOURCE: Jolley, Susan Arpajian. “Integrating Poetry and To Kill a Mockingbird.English Journal 92, no. 2 (November 2002): 34-40.

[In the following essay, Jolley discusses her approach to teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to high school students in conjunction with the study of poetry treating themes of courage and compassion.]

O Mockingbird, Mockingbird! Wherefore art thou so popular? And wherefore art thou so maligned? So popular, in fact, that the mayor of Chicago would exhort his denizens to read and discuss you en masse? So popular that more than 30 million copies of you have been sold since your publication in 1960 (Carrier...

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Carolyn M. Jones (essay date 2002)

SOURCE: Jones, Carolyn M. “Harper Lee.” In The History of Southern Women's Literature, edited by Carolyn Perry and Mary Louise Weaks, pp. 413-18. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

[In the following essay, Jones provides a general overview of To Kill a Mockingbird and its critical reception.]

As Harper Lee struggled to rework the manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird, Newsweek reported in 1961, her supporters at Lippincott were “screaming and yelling, hollering, ‘The book may not sell 2,000 copies, but we love Nelle.’” Their enthusiasm initiated that of a nation as Harper Lee burst onto the literary scene in 1960...

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Isaac Saney (essay date July-September 2003)

SOURCE: Saney, Isaac. “The Case against To Kill a Mockingbird.Race & Class 45, no. 1 (July-September 2003): 99-110.

[In the following essay, Saney discusses the media's response to the 1996 banning of To Kill a Mockingbird from the standard curricula of public schools in Nova Scotia.]

For many years the Black Educators' Association and parents, amongst others, have lobbied the Nova Scotia Department of Education and school boards to remove various books from the school curriculum and school use. Similar initiatives have taken place in New Brunswick and other provinces across Canada. Pressure from the community forced the Department of Education...

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Laurie Champion (essay date summer 2003)

SOURCE: Champion, Laurie. “Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.Explicator 61, no. 4 (summer 2003): 234-36.

[In the following essay, Champion explicates the symbolic use of the terms “right” and “left” in To Kill a Mockingbird, arguing that “right” in the novel symbolizes virtue, while “left” symbolizes iniquity.]

Throughout Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, besides the ordinary connotations of “right” and “left” as opposing spatial directions, the terms also work on a subtler level: “right” suggesting virtue and “left” suggesting iniquity.

Connotations of “right” and “left” play a crucial...

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