To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the town of Maycomb, Alabama. The story is told through the eyes of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, who is the age of six in the beginning of the tale. She tells the story in sequential order for the period of three summers.
Jean Louise Scout FinchShe narrates the story describing her life between the ages of six and nine. She is a tomboy and well educated, mainly due to her father, and she has an optimistic view of the world and people around her. She lives with her widowed father, older brother and their black cook. Atticus FinchScouts father is a lawyer in Maycomb and is descended from a well-respected local family.
He has had to raise his children alone and has instilled in them a strong sense of morality and fair play. During the 1930s there were great problems between the races, and he was one of the few committed to attaining equality for both blacks and whites. He agrees to defend a local black man charged with rape which exposing himself and his family to anger from the white community. Jeremy Atticus Jem FinchScouts brother is four years her senior, but is her constant playmate at the beginning of the story.
Towards the end of the tale he moves into adolescence and is shaken badly by the evil and injustice, which he witnesses during the trial of Tom Robinson. Tom RobinsonA black sharecropper who is accused of rape of a white woman, a member of the Ewell clan. CalpurniaThe old family cook of the Finch family, she is a stern disciplinarian and provides a link between the white world of the children and her own black community. Arthur Boo RadleyA recluse who has never set foot outside his house for fifteen years who becomes a source of intrigue for the children, adding fuel to their fertile imaginations. The Characters seem very real to me.
The situations and lessons learn in the book ,seem as if I was there myself. Also, the framing of the black man, shows the racism that I’ve read about in other books. Also what I’ve experienced myself before. The main conflicts of the story involve Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. Boo has been shut away from the world by his father and then later his brother through an incident that occurred fifteen years earlier when he stabbed his father with a pair of scissors. The suggestion is that he had gone mad and should have been committed to an asylum.
His influence in our story is all-good in that he gives gifts to the children, repairs Jems pants when they are caught on the fence and, of course, saves the childrens lives when Bob Ewell attacks them. Sheriff Tate recognizes the vulnerability of Boo and that any publicity would destroy him, so he says that the death was an accident. Yet even though he is a good person he is misunderstood. Tom Robinson is actually killed and his death is a sin committed by the whole white community of Maycomb. All he tried to do was to abide by the rules of the society in which he lived and when a black person is asked to do a chore he obeys(in those times).
I do not agree wit the actions of the jury,and also the other things against the community. Discrimination is that of the dominant white community over the subservient black community. They are not given the same opportunities regarding education, illustrated by the visit to the Negro church where only a few can read. As a result they have no opportunity to obtain a decent job and their families are doomed to live in poverty.
When any criminal act has taken place the blame immediately falls on the black community. This novel shows people of the today ,how it was back then. With all the injustice things going on ,and how people were so one-sided. I enjoyed the novel ,but It made me feel bad about certain situations.
I would recommend this book to someone.
