Reflection: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

In this blog post, a brief reflection on the ideas and themes expressed in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

This week, I finished reading the timeless classic To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Published in July 1960 and centered around a sleepy southern town in the 1930s, the plot and characters are loosely based on Lee’s observations of her family and her neighbors, and the events that transpired near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, during her childhood. I found it almost akin to a literary time machine when it came to the lives of children in the 1930s, and the prejudices everyone had to deal with in the southern United States. Its plot, ideas, and theme are both inspiring, eye-opening, and mysterious at the same time, and I highly recommend this book for anyone to read.

Throughout the unraveling of the plot and the development of the characters, I observed the humorous, familiar way the novel deals with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. Somehow Lee manages to wrap these daunting problems in an entertaining and amusing mask that makes the book all the more enjoyable to read. You can enjoy the plot twists and relate with the characters without getting bogged down in complex political or ethical issues, but all the most gruesome realities of society at the time are still there waiting if you want to go explore them. To Kill a Mockingbird is both approachable and deep at the same time, featuring complex morals and everything else you might want from a classic memoir-style novel.

The lurking undertones of class issues, courage, compassion, and gender roles are noticeable but still addressed throughout the book, and I found it interesting to see most or all of these issues addressed at once in a single interaction or scene. When at first it may seem that Lee is telling various stories in the earlier chapters in the book that have no apparent connection with each other, or to the plot or the issues that the novel is trying to address, everything comes together later on when key events foreshadow future developments that help to link everything together. Many have also remarked that the returning presence of the mockingbird throughout the book symbolizes innocence, and that “to kill a mockingbird” is to kill that which is innocent and harmless—like the character Tom Robinson, who was wrongly convicted of rape.

Overall, To Kill a Mockingbird was an engaging, heartwarming, and inspiring read. Its characters are familiar and easy to relate with, and while the plot may seem simple and easy to follow at first, complex undertones and themes reveal themselves as everything unfolds. Not only is it a sophisticated examination of the prejudices and class issues that people in the South faced at the time, but it addresses and speaks to many of the problems people were concerned about during that time period. To Kill a Mockingbird is more than just an interesting story—it’s a window into the sometimes difficult lives of people in the first half of the twentieth century. I highly recommend anyone interested to give this book a read—you’re sure to enjoy every aspect of it.