Harper Lee

To understand Harper Lee’s book To Kill a Mockingbird it is important to understand the meaning of prejudice, which is to hold onto unreasonable preconceived ideas, and discrimination which is to make a distinction between the ways we treat different categories of people. http://oxforddictionaries.com/

Nelle Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama. Her mother was Francis Cunningham Finch Lee.  Her father was Amasa Coleman Lee, a respectable lawyer. In 1919 her father defended a black man and his son accused of murdering a white man. He was unable to save them from being convicted and they were hanged. He educated Harper Lee in fairness and equality and questioned her prejudices. When Nelle was older, she studied to be a lawyer. She had been raised through a time of black and white segregation and of white supremacy and therefore black people did not get a fair trial in court and she sort to solve this problem. After studying law however she found out that the laws were fair but the problems arose from the people in the juries. The people that were chosen to be the jurors held onto their prejudices during the cases, which effected their decisions. After this realisation, Lee quit law and set out to become a writer in the hope that she would be able to change people’s attitudes. Harper Lee wanted to demonstrate that discrimination is wrong and to alter the way that people view and treat others.

WRITING THE BOOK

Harper Lee was very brave to write a book like this around the time she did as many people at this time were prejudiced against African Americans based on the colour of their skin and she would have been at risk of backlash from white supremacist groups. Also, in order to get people to read her story the title had to be carefully thought out. If Lee had named the book “The horrible things people do because of discrimination” or “People are hypocrites” then no one would have bothered to read it.

Harper Lee used characterisation to tell the story through the eyes of a young girl named Jean Louise Finch (Scout). As the narrator, Scout recalls the events of her childhood and because the book was written from the perspective of a child, the reader is more able to sympathise with the characters and events in the story. Harper Lee also chose to use a child’s point of view in her story as it is easier to understand if they don’t have prejudices and don’t understand certain situations. For Lee to still include such strong themes as discrimination against people of different race, job, wealth, (presumed) mental health and even age, was a huge achievement.