REMEMBERING HARPER LEE

A year ago Harper Lee left us, and today I want to remember her discussing her most famous novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird". 

Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926 in the state of Alabama, in the Deep South.  Her father was a lawyer , instead her mother died in 1951. She was a close friend of  Truman  Capote, the writer who  inspired  her to create the character of Dill in “ To Kill a Mockingbird”.

Since she was a teenager she had loved literature and for that reason , in the 1948 she  moved to New York to become a writer. There she met her old friend Truman Capote again and he encouraged her to write her first novel.  So Harper Lee started writing  “ To Kill a Mokingbird”, and  in 1960 it was published. She didn’t expect  that book  would make her famous all over the world.

“To Kill a Mokingbird” is set in the 1930s and the main character  is a  child named Jean-Louise, whom everyone calls Scout.  She lives in Maycomb , a town in the state of Alabama, with her  father Atticus , a lawyer, and  her older brother Jem. During the summer  the two  children
meet  Dill, their neighbour’s nephew who has  come to Maycomb to spend his summer holidays. Scout and Jem become Dill’s friends soon and they start playing together every day, they invent stories which are inspired by Arthur (Boo) Radley, the frightening neighbour who never goes out of his home.  The three children fantasize about him  and they imagine him as a horrible monster who did terrible things, in fact  every time they pass in front  of his house they run way, they are scared of Boo Radley.

Harper Lee not only describes the adventures of Scouts and her friends , in her book she also describes the society of the Deep South. She  tells us of a town full of prejudices where the community is divided in two factions: white people and black people. Harper Lee recounts the story of Tom Robinson , a black man accused of raping a withe woman, through the eyes of  little Scout.

 Her father Atticus is tasked to defend  him unleashing  the anger of the people who live in Maycomb. Scout and her brother , finding out Tom’s  story, are aware of the closed  mentality of the adults, but thanks to Atticus they  aren’t  conditioned by prejudices.

 This book has many important teachings. It taught me to not  judge people  if I don’t Know them,  to not have prejudices or prejudgements.  We must look ahead  and not  stop at the  appearances, we should always keep our minds open and we don’t have shouldn’t  have a close mind.

As Atticus says: “ You  really never understand a person until you consider  things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it”.

A scene from the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962)

Have you read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? Did you like it? Why/Why not?

Lucrezia