”To Kill A Mocingbird”
Written by Harper Lee

”To Kill A Mockingbird” is an American novel written in 1960 by Harper Lee. It is a masterpiece among classic American literature and won the Pulitzer Prize. It has been categorized as a Southern Gothic novel by some because of the extreme nightmarish setting and feel of the novel and its characters. The story takes place during the Great Depression in the small southern town of Maycomb, Alabama. It´s based on real events from Harper Lee´s childhood in a neighboring town.

The story is seen through the eyes of the child named Scout Finch whose father is a well-known lawyer named Atticus Finch. It is a coming of age story where Scout learns some disturbing truths about her world. The two heroes of the novel are Atticus Finch because of his high morals and Tom Robinson because of what he endured and he too is a highly moral character. In a nutshell, our hero Tom Robinson is falsely accused of rape and it is during the trial that we realize he could not possibly have done it. Yet the townspeople are clamoring for his execution. Mayella Ewell is his accuser and she is clearly lying. Tom Robinson loses the trial because of the collective and pervasive corruption in the town and gets shot while trying to escape. This is a tale of a town engulfed by evil.

The story elements are racial and gender injustice since the hero Tom is accused solely on his race and gender. Poverty, hypocrisy and character strangeness give the novel a nightmarish quality as it becomes clear that something bad is about to happen. There is a feeling of dread.

This is a classic story of the lynch archetype where a group of people, in this case a town, colluded to commit a heinous crime. Most of the characters reacted out of fear and ignorance and went against beliefs they claimed to espouse from their religion and on a daily basis. They behaved terribly and weren´t able to see that Tom Robinson was a good member of the community. He was someone any decent person would want as a neighbor.

(Commentary by www.ink2quill.com )
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