thesis on to kill a mockingbird

101 To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Titles & Examples

If you struggle to find “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay topics on prejudice, race, the characters’ courage, or any other issue, look no further. Our team has prepared a list of titles and essay writing tips for this book.

🏆 Best To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Topics & Examples

📌 most interesting to kill a mockingbird essay titles, 👍 good to kill a mockingbird research topics, ❓ to kill a mockingbird essay questions.

Before we will talk about the do’s and don’ts in essay writing, let’s clarify the types of essay.

When working on “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay thesis, you can focus on the facts of the book or concentrate on your attitude towards its key issues and characters. According to your approach, we can divide essays into two main areas:

• Objective essay: you set out your personal thoughts on a chosen issue and provide supporting arguments and evidence;
• Subjective essay: you express your point of view on a specific topic without claiming the truth and strengthening it with facts.

For example, when you choose a “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay topics on goodness, you will state that Atticus is a kind and fearless. No doubt that this character has a positive role.

On the other hand, when you describe Mayella, you will have to choose: will you condemn her or express pity.

As for the essay content, it can be divided into many subcategories:

• Philosophical essay
• Critical essay
• Literary analysis
• Historical essay, etc.

There are also a few key literary types:

• Feature article, etc.

Do’s & Don’ts When Writing To Kill a Mockingbird Essays

Now, it’s time to talk about what you should write and what to avoid in your paper. First of all, you have to remember that all “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay titles should reveal the essence of the issue.

Recommendations for essay writing:

• Do mark your essay subject at the beginning of the text. “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay hooks will help you to catch the reader’s attention. Don’t forget to emphasize the central issue in the conclusion.
• Do support the style of presentation by your emotions, vision, and opinion. Use the “question-answer” in paragraphs. Make the transitions between paragraphs harmonious and smooth.
• Do use quotes, historical facts, and observations to argue the thesis statement, solve the main issue, and describe the key subject of the paper.
• Do stick to the central thesis of your essay. Avoid deepen into philosophical reflections — tell about concrete facts and examples. Here’s an example: don’t include the facts from the author’s biography if you focus on the events of the book and factors that affect discrimination.
• Do proofread the paper. Read carefully your essay several times and think if your readers will understand your expressions.
• Do not use specific terminology in “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay. For example, when you write about discrimination, you don’t necessarily have to provide its dictionary definition or use complex law, historical and psychological literature, and samples. Just your own language. However, it doesn’t mean that your opinion should seem ungrounded.
• Do add your emotions to the paper. Let your readers feel that you believe in your ideas when defending the essay thesis.
• Don’t choose the header before you write an essay. First, you should write an essay, and only then compile the title of your paper.

Well, now you know about the essay types, what to do, and what to avoid in your essay. Of course, you may ask: “What to write in my own essay?”

The key to success is to start. Check “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay examples on our website to get inspiration. Even the topic seems to you too complicated, start your research, and then you will be able to express new and original thoughts.

• “To Kill a Mockingbird”: Book and Movie Differences It is important to note that the film, To Kill a Mockingbird entails most of the aspects depicted in the novel.
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• To Kill a Mockingbird Main Themes The main themes of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird cover both adult and children’s concerns, including the dignity of human life, the importance of truth, the rights of people to be different, the need […]
• Novel Appreciation: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The contemporary discussion of this novel is often tied to the question of racism; nevertheless, I am convinced that this book can be of great interest to modern readers, and I would like to discuss […]
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• Empathy and Racism in Stockett’s The Help and Li’s To Kill a Mockingbird To start with, the first approach to racism and promoting empathy is to confront prevalent discrimination and racism, which was often shown in The Help. Another solution to racism and the possibility of promoting empathy […]
• Systemic Racism in Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” & Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys” Racism in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is pronounced and presented as the natural habitat of the town of Maycomb.
• Themes in “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, in its imperfection, is a testament to the march of progress in social justice and racial equality.
• Nelle Harper Lee and Her Reflection in “To Kill a Mockingbird” The author perfectly reflects her life in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird as her father played an essential role in creating the story.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” Drama Film The plot proves to be logical and consistent throughout the movie, motivating the audience to watch till the end of the film.
• Understanding Other Perspective: To Kill a Mockingbird The literature portrays the actual happenings in the society in an educative and corrective manner that is acceptable to both sides of the victim and perpetrator of injustices.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird”: The Novel by Harper Lee Scout does not realize the severity of many of the events of the book as they are taking place, and as such she is an innocent.
• American History in “To Kill a Mockingbird” Book & Film Racial attitudes and the dominance of white men over the black ones in the USA are the central ideas of the movie and the novel.
• Racist Trial in the Novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee For the purpose, evaluation would be made in the context of utilization of events, time and culture of the book and compare it to today’s society, culture and racial attitudes.
• Racial Prejudice in Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” Paul Lawrence Dunbar in his poem, “Sympathy” has vividly portrayed the pangs of a caged bird and likens it to the collective pain that colored people have felt like victims of racial prejudices.”And a pain […]
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” Novel by Harper Lee It is one of the main characteristics of the mockingbird includes its innocence and imitation of the songs of other birds in a loud voice.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee In consequence, the book became a model source of reading that inspired people to further take on the issues of race in the USA and throughout the world.
• American Novel: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee It is also worth to mention that the novel is indeed relevant to its readership because it mirrors the nature of society affected by racism and inequality. Through the act of inclusiveness, I am in […]
• What It Takes to Kill a Mockingbird: In Search for the Differences Between the Novel and a Movie The characters both in the novel and in the movie were often pushed to the breaking point; however, one of such moments described in the book was left out of the movie.
• The Problem of Racism and Injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee In the novel, Harper Lee demonstrates her vision of the question of the social inequality with references to the problem of racism in the society based on prejudice and absence of actual principles of tolerance […]
• Social Issues in the “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee The phrase ‘to kill a mocking bird’ stands out as a metaphor in the book To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
• To Kill a Mockingbird: Movie Analysis Speaking of the movements which convey the essence of the film without any speech “intrusion”, it would be a good idea to drive the example of Boo Radley standing in the darker corner of the […]
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the Techniques Used: Characterisation, Structure, Point of View, and Language
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How the moral lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird endure today

Assoc. Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne

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In our series, Guide to the classics , experts explain key works of literature.

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the classics of American literature. Never out of print, the novel has sold over 40 million copies since it was first published in 1960. It has been a staple of high school syllabuses, including in Australia, for several decades, and is often deemed the archetypal race and coming-of-age novel . For many of us, it is a formative read of our youth.

Read more: 'Great books', nationhood and teaching English literature

The story is set in the sleepy Alabama town of Maycomb in 1936 - 40 years after the Supreme Court’s notorious declaration of the races as being “separate but equal” , and 28 years before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act . Our narrator is nine-year-old tomboy, Scout Finch, who relays her observations of her family’s struggle to deal with the class and racial prejudice shown towards the local African American community.

At the centre of the family and the novel stands the highly principled lawyer Atticus Finch. A widower, he teaches Scout, her older brother Jem, and their imaginative friend Dill, how to live and behave honourably. In this he is aided by the family’s hardworking and sensible black housekeeper Calpurnia, and their kind and generous neighbour, Miss Maudie.

It is Miss Maudie, for example, who explains to Scout why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.”

Throughout the novel, the children grow more aware of the community’s attitudes. When the book begins they are preoccupied with catching sight of the mysterious and much feared Boo Radley, who in his youth stabbed his father with a pair of scissors and who has never come out of the family house since. And when Atticus agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman, they too become the target of hatred.

A morality tale for modern America

One might expect a book that dispatches moral lessons to be dull reading. But To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. The lessons are presented in a seemingly effortless style, all the while tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality.

Read more: William Faulkner diagnosed modern ills in As I Lay Dying

As the Finches return from Robinson’s trial, Miss Maudie says: “as I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that.”

Despite the tragedy of Robinson’s conviction, Atticus succeeds in making the townspeople consider and struggle with their prejudice.

The effortlessness of the writing owes much to the way the story is told. The narrator is a grown Scout, looking back on her childhood. When she begins her story, she seems more interested in telling us about the people and incidents that occupied her six-year-old imagination. Only slowly does she come to the events that changed everything for her and Jem, which were set in motion long before their time. Even then, she tells these events in a way that shows she too young to always grasp their significance.

The lessons Lee sets out are encapsulated in episodes that are as funny as they are serious, much like Aesop’s Fables. A case in point is when the children return home from the school concert with Scout still dressed in her outlandish ham costume. In the dark they are chased and attacked by Bob Ewell the father of the woman whom Robinson allegedly raped. Ewell, armed with a knife, attempts to stab Scout, but the shapeless wire cage of the ham causes her to loose balance and the knife to go astray. In the struggle that ensues someone pulls Ewell off the teetering body of Scout and he falls on the knife. It was Boo Radley who saved her.

Another lesson about what it means to be truly brave is delivered in an enthralling episode where a local farmer’s dog suddenly becomes rabid and threatens to infect all the townsfolk with his deadly drool.

Scout and Jem are surprised when their bespectacled, bookish father turns out to have a “God-given talent” with a rifle; it is he who fires the single shot that will render the townsfolk safe. The children rejoice at what they consider an impressive display of courage. However, he tells them that what he did was not truly brave. The better example of courage, he tells them, is Mrs Dubose (the “mean” old lady who lived down the road), who managed to cure herself of a morphine addiction even as she was dying a horribly painful death from cancer.

He also teaches them the importance of behaving in a civilised manner, even when subjected to insults. Most of all Atticus teaches the children the importance of listening to one’s conscience even when everyone else holds a contrary view: “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule”, he says, “is a person’s conscience.”

The continuing value in Atticus’ belief in the importance of principled thinking in the world of Black Lives Matter and the Australian government’s rhetoric of “African gangs” , is clear.

Atticus’ spiel on “conscience” and the other ethical principles he insists on living by, are key to the enduring influence of the novel. It conjures an ideal of moral standards and human behaviour that many people still aspire to today, even though the novel’s events and the characters belong to the past.

Lee herself was not one to shy away from principled displays: writing to a school that banned her novel, she summed up the source of the morality her book expounds. The novel, she said, “spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct”.

Fame and obscurity

When first published the novel received rave reviews . A year later it won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, followed by a movie version in 1962 starring Gregory Peck . Indeed, the novel was such a success that Lee, unable to cope with all the attention and publicity, retired into obscurity .

Interviewed late in life, Lee cited two reasons for her continued silence: “I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. Second, I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again.”

The latter statement is doubtless a reference to the autobiographical nature of her book. Lee passed her childhood in the rural town of Monroeville in the deep south, where her attorney father defended two black men accused of killing a shopkeeper. The accused were convicted and hanged.

Undoubtedly influenced by these formative events, the biographical fiction Lee drew out of her family history became yet more complex upon the publication of her only other novel, Go Set a Watchman, in 2016. Critics panned it it for lacking the light touch and humour of the first novel. They also decried the fact that the character of Atticus Finch was this time around a racist bigot , a feature that had the potential to taint the author’s legacy .

Read more: Review/ Has Go Set a Watchman helped topple the notion of the white saviour?

Subsequent biographical research revealed that Go Set A Watchman, was not a sequel, but the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. Following initial rejection by the publisher Lippincot, Lee reworked it into the superior novel many of us know and still love today.

Lee gave us the portrait of one small town in the south during the depression years. But it was so filled with lively detail, and unforgettable characters with unforgettable names like Atticus, Scout, Calpurnia and Boo Radley that a universal story emerged, and with it the novel’s continuing popularity.

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Go Set a Watchman
• Guide to the Classics

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To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird , by American author Harper Lee, was published during the civil rights movement and uses its characters to explore the consequences of hatred and prejudice. Read the overview below to gain an understanding of the work and explore the previews of analysis and criticism that invite further interpretation.

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To kill a mockingbird topic overview.

"To Kill a Mockingbird, An Introduction to." Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume 194, Gale, 2005.

Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel  To Kill a Mockingbird  has remained enormously popular since its publication in 1960. Recalling her experiences as a six-year-old from an adult perspective, Jean Louise Finch, nicknamed "Scout," describes the circumstances involving her widowed father, Atticus, and his legal defense of Tom Robinson, a local black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. In the three years surrounding the trial, Scout and her older brother, Jem, witness the unjust consequences of prejudice and hate while at the same time witnessing the values of courage and integrity through their father's example. Lee's first and only novel,  To Kill a Mockingbird  was published during the Civil Rights movement and was hailed as an exposé of Southern racist society. The heroic character of Atticus Finch has been held up as a role model of moral virtue and impeccable character for lawyers to emulate.  To Kill a Mockingbird  has endured as a mainstay on high school and college reading lists. It was adapted to film in 1962 as a major motion picture starring Gregory Peck.

Plot and Major Characters

To Kill a Mockingbird  is set in the small, rural town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the early 1930s. The character of Atticus Finch, Scout's father, was based on Lee's own father, a liberal Alabama lawyer and statesman who frequently defended African Americans within the racially prejudiced Southern legal system. Scout and her brother Jem are raised by their father and by Calpurnia, an African-American housekeeper who works for the family. Scout and Jem meet and befriend seven-year-old Dill Harris, a boy who has arrived in Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. Lee has stated that the character of Dill is based on young Truman Capote, a well-known Southern writer and childhood friend. Together with Dill, Scout and Jem make a game of observing "Boo" Radley, a town recluse who has remained inside his house for fifteen years, trying to provoke him to come outside. Local myth holds that Boo eats live squirrels and prowls the streets at night, and the children's perception of him is colored by such tales. In the fall, Dill returns to his family in the North and Scout enters the first grade. Scout and Jem begin to discover mysterious objects, designed to intrigue children, hidden in a tree on the Radley property.

When Tom Robinson, an African-American man, is accused of raping Mayella Ewell, Atticus is appointed as the defense attorney. Mayella and her shiftless father, Bob Ewell, live in abject poverty on the outskirts of town. The family is known as trouble and disliked by townspeople. Despite this, Atticus's defense of Tom is unpopular in the white community, and Scout and Jem find themselves taunted at school due to their father's defense of a black man. Atticus consistently strives to instill moral values in his children, and hopes to counteract the influence of racial prejudice. The children view their father as frustratingly staid and bookish, until he is asked by the sheriff to shoot a rabid dog that is roaming the street. After Atticus kills the dog, Scout and Jem learn that their father is renowned as a deadly marksman in Maycomb County, but that he chooses not to use this skill, unless absolutely necessary. Scout's aunt, Alexandra, unexpectedly arrives to reside with the Finch family, announcing it is time someone reined in the children. She makes it her mission to counteract Atticus's liberal influence on the children and to instill ladylike virtues in the tomboyish Scout.

The night before the trial of Tom Robinson is to begin, a group of local men threaten a lynching, but Scout inadvertently disrupts their plan when she recognizes the father of a schoolmate in the crowd of would-be lynchers. When the trial begins, Atticus tries to protect his children from the anger and prejudice they would hear; however, Scout, Jem, and Dill sneak into the courtroom and sit in the balcony with the black community. Mayella and her father testify that Tom raped Mayella after he was asked onto their property to break up an old chifforobe into firewood. Atticus, however, proves Tom's innocence by demonstrating that while Mayella's face was beaten and bruised on her right side, Tom's left arm had been rendered completely useless by an earlier injury. Therefore, Atticus concludes, Tom could not possibly be the left-handed assailant who struck Mayella on the right side of her face. Atticus further suggests that it was Bob, Mayella's father, who beat her, and that, in fact, no rape occurred. Before the jury departs to deliberate, Atticus appeals to their sense of justice, imploring them not to allow racial prejudice to interfere with their deliberations. However, after two hours, the jury returns with a guilty verdict, sentencing Tom to be executed for rape. Later, Tom is shot to death during an attempt to escape from jail.

The following fall, Bob Ewell, incensed by Atticus's treatment of him during the trial, attacks Scout and Jem with a knife as they are walking home from a school Halloween pageant. Boo Radley, secretly observing the scene, intervenes in the scuffle, and Bob Ewell is stabbed and killed in the process. Called to the scene, the Sheriff and Atticus agree to not report Boo's involvement to the police, because a trial against him would likely be prejudiced. Intimately aware of issues of prejudice due to the Tom Robinson case, Atticus and the children agree to report that Ewell fell on his knife in the scuffle, sparing Boo the consequences of a legal trial. Scout realizes in retrospect that Boo has never been the threatening figure the children had imagined, and that he was responsible for leaving the mysterious gifts for them to find on his property. After walking Boo home, Scout stands on the porch of his house looking out, finally seeing the world through a wider perspective.

To Kill a Mockingbird  also can be read as a coming-of-age story featuring a young girl growing up in the South and experiencing moral awakenings. Narrated from Scout's point-of-view, the novel demonstrates the now-adult narrator's hindsight perspective on the growth of her identity and outlook on life. In developing a more mature sensibility, the tomboyish Scout challenges the forces attempting to socialize her into a prescribed gender role as a Southern lady. Aunt Alexandra tries to subtly and not-so subtly push Scout into a traditional gender role--a role that often runs counter to her father's values and her own natural inclinations. However, as events around the trial become ugly, Scout realizes the value of some of the traditions Alexandra is trying to show her and decides she, too, can be a "lady."

To Kill a Mockingbird  explores themes of heroism and the idea of role models as well. Lee has stated that the novel was essentially a long love letter to her father, whom she idolized as a man with deeply held moral convictions. Atticus is clearly the hero of the novel, and functions as a role model for his children. Early in the story, the children regard their father as weak and ineffective because he does not conform to several conventional standards of Southern masculinity. They eventually realize that Atticus possesses not only skill with a rifle, but also moral courage, intelligence, and humor, and they come to regard him as a hero in his own right.

More Articles

Symbolism and racism in to kill a mockingbird.

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.

Reconstructing Atticus Finch

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.

Humor and Humanity in To Kill a Mockingbird

[Tavernier-Courbin discusses Lee's unexpected use of humor in To Kill a Mockingbird .]

Discovering Theme and Structure in the Novel

Schuster comments on the theme and structure of To Kill a Mockingbird .

Esselman describes Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as a vivid, sensitive portrait of the South that deals with themes of racism, justice, and maturation.

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To Kill a Mockingbird

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To Kill a Mockingbird follows Scout , a precocious six-year-old, over the course of three years as she begins to grow, and in the process, bears witness to the trial of Tom Robinson , a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. As a child, Scout has set ideas regarding what’s good and what’s evil, but throughout the novel, her father, Atticus , gradually begins to encourage her to see that the world isn’t divided into good people and bad people. Rather, he suggests to her that all people are composed of a mix of good and bad qualities, but regardless, everyone is deserving of being treated with dignity and respect.

At first, Scout and her brother, Jem , hold very black and white views of what’s good and what’s evil. They believe that most of the people in Maycomb are good, as is the law. But in their eyes, the Radley family down the street (and specifically the youngest adult son, Arthur Radley ) is evil—as is their elderly neighbor in the other direction, Mrs. Dubose . However, this ignores or contradicts over some of Scout’s more nuanced observations, such as the fact that Miss Stephanie , a good Maycomb lady by many standards, is a horrible gossip and nobody should believe what she says. Yet, Scout lumps Miss Stephanie in with Maycomb at large as a good part of her life. Meanwhile, there’s little real evidence that Arthur Radley, whom the children call Boo, is a bad person. In fact, there’s little evidence that he exists at all—Scout and Jem believe that Boo is evil because of childish neighborhood rumors that Boo survives on cats and squirrels and spends his evenings peeping into people’s windows. In other words, Scout’s world is clearly more complex than strict terms of good and evil, even if she doesn’t have the maturity to fully recognize this.

Through Tom Robinson’s trial, Scout has a number of opportunities to begin to question her initial assumptions about whether people are good or bad, and Atticus’s behavior impresses upon her that one of the best things a person can do is help another person maintain their dignity, which he does by defending Robinson. It’s confusing for Scout when she hears peers, extended family, and even adults in town—many of whom previously fell into her “good” category—take issue with Atticus’s defense of Robinson, defense that she understands that Robinson is entitled to under the law. Because of this, Scout has to grapple with the fact that people despise Atticus for doing his job, which begins to suggest that the people of Maycomb aren’t as overwhelmingly good as Scout initially thought. Indeed, many of them are extremely racist, and while they may treat their white neighbors kindly and with compassion, it’s unthinkable for many of them to extend that kind of generosity to their black neighbors or employees.

As Scout comes to understand that her town and neighborhood aren’t as good as she initially thought, she also has several opportunities to discover that seemingly evil villains in her life are actually not as villainous as she once believed. Though Mrs. Dubose is a foul woman who hurls insults, slurs, and other abuse at every member of the Finch family, including Jem and Scout, she also grows beautiful camellias of which she is very proud, a small quirk that humanizes her to the reader, if not to the children. Further, Atticus shares after her death that Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict who, in attempt to die free and with dignity, broke herself of her addiction in the weeks before her death. While this doesn’t substantially change how Jem and Scout view Mrs. Dubose, as they remain fixated on the awful way she treated them and Atticus, Atticus makes the point that every person, no matter how unsavory they may seem, has their own sense of dignity that his children—and for that matter, the reader—should make every effort to recognize and respect. Similarly, Arthur Radley makes a dramatic leap in Scout’s mind from a nefarious presence to the reason she’s alive when, a few months after Robinson’s trial, he kills Mr. Ewell (the man who accused Robinson of raping his daughter Mayella ) in defense of Scout and Jem, whom Mr. Ewell tries to murder on their way home from a Halloween pageant. While the particulars of events that night raise a number of questions about morality, as Arthur does murder Mr. Ewell, both the adults and Scout choose to focus on the fact that what Arthur did was something that saved the lives of Jem and Scout. It’s possible that he also saved the lives of Mr. Ewell’s abused children and preserved some sense of safety in the town by removing its most dangerous resident. This situates Arthur as one of the novel’s “ mockingbirds ,” in that he helps and even puts himself in danger for others despite the wider world’s cruelty toward him.

Possibly more importantly than the novel’s exploration of the nuances of adult characters, however, is its portrayal of Scout herself as a morally complex individual. While not maliciously racist, Scout still parrots racist slurs and beliefs that she hears others espouse, even in the midst of Robinson’s trial—at one point, she tries to comfort Dill , who’s upset by the prosecution’s racist treatment of Robinson, with the assertion that Robinson is “just a Negro,” and therefore it’s not worth getting too upset over his treatment, as it’s just the way things are. However, she does begin to question this and other thoughts and behaviors of her past, most notably when she begins to feel guilty for the way that she, Jem, and Dill surely tormented Arthur Radley for years. In this way, the novel proposes that everyone, no matter how seemingly good or seemingly bad, is nuanced and contains both good and evil—and most importantly, that through exposure, time, and maturity, it’s possible to become increasingly better. 

Good, Evil, and Human Dignity ThemeTracker

Good, Evil, and Human Dignity Quotes in To Kill a Mockingbird

“There's some folks who don't eat like us," she whispered fiercely, "but you ain't called on to contradict 'em at the table when they don't. That boy's yo' comp'ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?” “He ain't company, Cal, he's just a Cunningham—“ “Hush your mouth! Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot in this house's yo' comp'ny, and don't you let me catch you remarkin' on their ways like you was so high and mighty!”

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—“

“—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

“There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

“If you shouldn't be defendin' him, then why are you doin' it?”

“For a number of reasons,” said Atticus. “The main one is, if I didn't I couldn't hold up my head in town, I couldn't represent this county in the legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do something again.”

"Atticus, are we going to win it?"

“No, honey.”

“Then why—”

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” Atticus said.

“Remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.

“Your father's right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“The one that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Lula stopped, but she said, “You ain't got no business bringin' white chillun here—they got their church, we got our'n. It is our church, ain't it, Miss Cal?”

When I looked down the pathway again, Lula was gone. In her place was a solid mass of colored people.

One of them stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbage collector. “Mister Jem,” he said, “we're mighty glad to have you all here. Don't pay no 'tention to Lula, she's contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her. She's a troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an' haughty ways—we're mighty glad to have you all.”

Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was.

“If you had a clear conscience, why were you scared?”

“Like I says before, it weren't safe for any nigger to be in a—fix like that.”

“But you weren't in a fix—you testified that you were resisting Miss Ewell. Were you so scared that she'd hurt you, you ran, a big buck like you?”

“No suh, I's scared I'd be in court, just like I am now.”

“Scared of arrest, scared you'd have to face up to what you did?”

“No suh, scared I'd hafta face up to what I didn't do.”

“The way that man called him 'boy' all the time an' sneered at him, an' looked around at the jury every time he answered— … It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that—it just makes me sick.”

“They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep.”

[Jem] was certainly never cruel to animals, but I had never known his charity to embrace the insect world.

“Why couldn't I mash him?” I asked.

“Because they don't bother you,” Jem answered in the darkness. He had turned out his reading light.

Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.

A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing-pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention.

It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's [...] Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive.

Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog.

Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.

Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

“When they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things…Atticus, he was real nice…” His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.” He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

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Plot summary

• Analysis, adaptations, and Go Set a Watchman

What is To Kill a Mockingbird about?

What inspired harper lee to write to kill a mockingbird , how did people respond to to kill a mockingbird , why is to kill a mockingbird a significant text, is there a sequel to to kill a mockingbird .

To Kill a Mockingbird

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• National Endowment for the Arts - To Kill a Mockingbird
• Encyclopedia of Alabama - To Kill A Mockingbird
• Internet Archive - "To Kill a Mockingbird"
• Academia - To Kill a Mockingbird: Race, Class and Innocence in the Contemporary Society INTRODUCTION
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression (1929–39). The story centres on Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch, an unusually intelligent girl who ages from six to nine years old during the novel. She and her brother, Jeremy Atticus (“Jem”), are raised by their widowed father, Atticus Finch. Atticus is a well-known and respected lawyer. He teaches his children to be empathetic and just, always leading by example.

When Tom Robinson, one of the town’s Black residents, is falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman, Atticus agrees to defend him despite threats from the community. Although Atticus presents a defense that gives a more plausible interpretation of the evidence—that Mayella was attacked by her father, Bob Ewell—Tom is convicted. He is later killed while trying to escape custody. The children, meanwhile, play out their own miniaturized drama. Scout and Jem become especially interested in the town recluse, Arthur (“Boo”) Radley, who interacts with them by leaving them small gifts in a tree. On Halloween, when Bob Ewell tries to attack Scout and Jem, Boo intervenes and saves them. Boo ultimately kills Ewell. The sheriff, however, decides to tell the community that Ewell’s death was an accident.

It is widely believed that Harper Lee based the character of Atticus Finch on her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, a compassionate and dedicated lawyer. The plot of To Kill a Mockingbird was reportedly inspired in part by his unsuccessful defense of two African American men—a father and a son—accused of murdering a white storekeeper. The fictional character of Charles Baker (“Dill”) Harris also has a real-life counterpart. Dill is based on the author Truman Capote , Lee’s childhood friend and next-door neighbour in Monroeville, Alabama. (After the spectacular success of To Kill a Mockingbird , some speculated that Capote was the actual author of Lee’s work. This rumour was not put to rest until 2006.) There is some anecdotal evidence that the town recluse, Arthur (“Boo”) Radley, was based on Lee and Capote’s childhood neighbour, Son Boulware. According to Capote, Boo “was a real man, and he lived just down the road from us.…Everything [Lee] wrote about it is absolutely true.”

Harper Lee began writing To Kill a Mockingbird in the mid-1950s. It was published in 1960, just before the peak of the American civil rights movement . Initial critical responses to the novel were mixed. Many critics praised Lee for her sensitive treatment of a child’s awakening to racism and prejudice. Others, however, criticized the novel’s tendency to sermonize. Some reviewers argued that the narrative voice was unconvincing. The novel was nonetheless enormously popular with contemporary audiences. To Kill a Mockingbird flourished in the racially charged environment of the United States in the early 1960s. In its first year it sold about 500,000 copies. A year after the publication of the novel, Lee was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the best-known and most widely read books in the United States. Since its publication in 1960, the novel has been translated into some 40 languages and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. A staple on American high- school reading lists, the novel has inspired numerous stage and film adaptations, the most notable of which was the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. Lee’s novel continues to resonate with audiences today; in 2018 a stage adaptation of the novel debuted to rave reviews on Broadway.

In 2015 Harper Lee published a second novel titled Go Set a Watchman . Although it was technically written before To Kill a Mockingbird , the novel is essentially a sequel. Go Set a Watchman is set 20 years after the events of To Kill a Mockingbird . In the novel, Jean Louise (”Scout”) Finch—now a grown woman living in New York City—returns to her childhood home in Alabama to visit her aging father, who has embraced racist views. Despite the controversy surrounding its publication (some believe the novel is actually an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird ), the novel reportedly sold 1.1 million copies in its first week.

To Kill a Mockingbird , novel by American author Harper Lee , published in 1960. Enormously popular, it was translated into some 40 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide , and is one of the most-assigned novels in American schools. In 1961 it won a Pulitzer Prize . The novel was praised for its sensitive treatment of a child’s awakening to racism and prejudice in the American South .

To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression . The protagonist is Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch, an intelligent though unconventional girl who ages from six to nine years old during the course of the novel. She is raised with her brother, Jeremy Atticus (“Jem”), by their widowed father, Atticus Finch . He is a prominent lawyer who encourages his children to be empathetic and just. He notably tells them that it is “a sin to kill a mockingbird ,” alluding to the fact that the birds are innocent and harmless.

When Tom Robinson, one of the town’s Black residents, is falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman, Atticus agrees to defend him despite threats from the community . At one point he faces a mob intent on lynching his client but refuses to abandon him. Scout unwittingly diffuses the situation. Although Atticus presents a defense that gives a more plausible interpretation of the evidence—that Mayella was attacked by her father, Bob Ewell—Tom is convicted, and he is later killed while trying to escape custody. A character compares his death to “the senseless slaughter of songbirds,” paralleling Atticus’s saying about the mockingbird.

The children, meanwhile, play out their own miniaturized drama of prejudice and superstition as they become interested in Arthur (“Boo”) Radley , a reclusive neighbour who is a local legend . They have their own ideas about him and cannot resist the allure of trespassing on the Radley property. Their speculations thrive on the dehumanization perpetuated by their elders. Atticus, however, reprimands them and tries to encourage a more sensitive attitude. Boo makes his presence felt indirectly through a series of benevolent acts, finally intervening when Bob Ewell attacks Jem and Scout. Boo kills Ewell, but Heck Tate, the sheriff, believes it is better to say that Ewell’s death occurred when he fell on his own knife, sparing the shy Boo from unwanted attention. Scout agrees, noting that to do otherwise would be “sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird.”