English Lit

• To Kill a Mockingbird

  A novel by Harper Lee set in the mid-1930s in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama
• Narrator

  • Scout Finch, a six-year-old tomboy who lives with her lawyer father Atticus and her ten-year-old brother Jem
• Plot

  1. Scout, Jem and their friend Dill try to make their reclusive neighbour Boo Radley leave his house

  2. Atticus is asked to defend Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman

  3. Atticus takes on the case even though everyone knows he has little hope of winning

  4. The reader sees the trial develop through the childlike eyes of Scout
• Themes


  • Tolerance
  • Empathy
  • Understanding
• Although To Kill a Mockingbird was written in 1960, it is set in the mid-1930s
• Many residents of Maycomb are racists
• Dill


  Seven-year-old who spends the summer holidaying with his Aunt Rachel in Maycomb
• Boo Radley


  • Hasn't been outside his house since committing a schoolboy prank
  • Stories in the neighbourhood suggest he is now a monster
• Dill's obsession with making Boo Radley come out


  Jem runs into the Radley front yard and touches the side of their house
• Scout


  Starts school for the first time and is extremely apprehensive
• Scout can already read and write


  Miss Caroline is angry and feels Atticus has taught Scout to read too many difficult words from books that are too advanced for her
• Scout stands up for Walter Cunningham


  She gets in trouble and starts a fight with Walter which Jem has to break up
• Walter Cunningham


  Son of a proud but poor farmer who has paid Atticus' legal bills in food grown on his farm
• Calpurnia


  The Finch's black maid, treated very much as part of the family
• Jem and Scout find gifts in the oak tree outside the Radley house


  They realise the gifts must be meant for them but puzzle as to who could have left them
• Dill, Jem and Scout re-enact moments from Boo Radley's life


  Atticus tells them to stop tormenting that man
• Miss Maudie


  A friend of Atticus who is tolerant and despises gossip, particularly on the subject of Boo Radley