To Kill a Mockingbird | 
 enlarge | Author: Harper Lee
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1766 reviews
Sales Rank: 2047
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 281
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0446310786
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780446310789
ASIN: 0446310786
Publication Date: October 11, 1988
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out." Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up. Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber
Product Description
The explosion of racial hate in an Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1761 more reviews...
 A Must Read for all Readers and Non-Readers December 4, 2008
This book captivates the mind with its wonderful adventures and adorable characters. Seeing the world through the eyes of an eight year old may sound dumb, and not a great way to spend you time. On the contrary, the memories that you had as a chold growing up emerge from a long sleep and you start to remember your adventure. Remember the haunted mansion down the street? the old man who murdered his wife? Well, this story talks about those stories, and more. It talks about matters that even most adults don't approach in the modern world. The setting is in the depths of the Great Depression, and it takes place in little Maycomb County, Alabama. The story weaves in and out of race, caste systems, and everyday life alongside fun in an "in-depth" story. This book has much more depth than when first read. Many chapters that seem random aren't that strange for they all have a meaning. I personally loved this book. I read it at school and it brought so much fun while reading it. It also brought the thrill of watching a trial through the eyes of a child. We as the readers are made to think in this book, but not so much that it's hard. Because our lives have progressed so much we see that her world is very different from ours right now. But similarities are still there. A couple of chapters in this book represent how even though something looks like it has been uprooted from our world (ex: racism), to get it to go away, you have to dig it up from it's roots. One major theme in this story is Roots and History. It even has a little tale of puppy love! (Remember those first crushes?). I realize that I make it sound bad, but that is because in class we do tend to overthink everything. That's why if you're an intellectual reader or just someone who likes books or to pass time, no matter what genre you like, this book will appeal to you. Buy this book or borrow it from a library or a friend and read it, because it will touch your heart as a great book and warm your heart as a human being. The movie though... Well, that's another story.
Stop What You're Doing And Read This! December 3, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you haven't read this book yet, stop whatever it is that you're doing, go immediately to a book store, and pick this up. To Kill a Mockingbird is among the best books I've ever read.
For those that haven't read this, or haven't seen the film version with Gregory Peck, which is also outstanding, To Kill a Mockingbird is about the Finch family. Atticus Finch is a lawyer and widower in a small Alabama town during the Great Depression. He has two children: Jem, an 11-year old boy, and Scout, an 8-year old girl. Their lives are turned upside down when Atticus is appointed to represent Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman. The story is told from Scout's perspective.
While the story is framed around social and racial issues in the South, it's really about much more than that: primarily, it's a story about growing up. The Robinson case makes the transitions that Jem and Scout go through much more dramatic, but they experience the same kind of wonder and confusion that all of us experience as we move from childhood to young adulthood.
Atticus is exactly the kind of person we aspire to be: honest, caring, understanding, moral, and unflappable. You sort of get the impression of Atticus as the last righteous man. Atticus lives his philosophy: "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience" (p. 120). In short, Atticus is the emodiment of human dignity--not just for himself, but for others too. If you aren't moved by his closing argument in the Robinson trial, you may be in a coma.
I thought it was odd, and somewhat revealing hearing the kids, especially Scout, describe their father: "Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his abilities and manliness....Our father didn't do anything. He worked in an office, not in a drugstore. Atticus didn't drive a dump truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone." Ouch. But this is Scout with a child's perspective; her growing maturity changes the way both she and Jem see their father.
Harper Lee never wrote another novel; she grew up with and remained a close friend of Truman Capote's until his death. Harper Lee and Gregory Peck also remained close friends until his demise; Peck's grandson was named Harper in her honor.
To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for a reason: it's a masterpiece. Its warmth, compassion, comedy, and tragedy are rendered with such humanity that it honestly blew me away. I can't recommend it enough. Read it today.
 So very boring November 28, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
The only reason this book deserves one star is that something interesting actually happened,albeit AT THE END OF THE FRIGGIN' BOOK!
I swear watching Teletubbies or mold grow in your shower is more interesting than this book.I could not get through half of it.
Nothing even goes on until the very end.By then though,you have given up as did I.
I agree that the book has a good plot but, how the plot is written is an entirely different story.One reviewer on here said that it sounded like it was written by a fifth grader.I wholeheartedly agree.I will never pick up this book again.
 Race and Class in the Deep South November 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is perhaps appropriate that this was the first book I read after the election of America's first black President. My real reason for re-reading it, however, was for the purposes of comparison with Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust", which deals with a similar theme. Indeed, I recently came across an allegation that Harper Lee's novel was essentially a plagiarism of Faulkner's.
The book is set in Maycomb County, Alabama, during the depression era of the 1930s. It is a first-person narrative told through the eyes of Jean Louise Finch who, for some reason, goes by the nickname Scout. Although she is only a child at the time of the events described, the narrative voice is that of the adult Jean Louise looking back at her childhood from some point in the future. The action of "Intruder in the Dust" is set over a few days and tells the story of one single incident, the murder of Vinson Gowrie; "To Kill a Mockingbird" is set over a period of about two years and essentially tells the story of Jean Louise's childhood between the ages of six and eight, although it concentrates on one crucial incident. The main characters, apart from Jean Louise herself, are her brother Jem and their friend Dill (another unexplained nickname; his real name is Charles).
Jean Louise and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer. The book's central incident is the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, for the alleged rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell; Atticus is Robinson's defence attorney. Like Faulkner, Lee uses a classic thriller plot- the fight to prove the innocence of a man wrongly accused- to explore racism in America's Deep South. Although Robinson is clearly innocent of the charge, the all-white jury nevertheless vote to convict him, largely because to admit that a white woman, even one as sluttish as Mayella, was capable of making false accusations would force them to abandon their cherished ideas about the purity of Southern womanhood.
Harper Lee's concerns are wider than just the race issue. The book also has a lot to say about attitudes to social class among the white community, contrasting affluent middle-class families like the Finches with the likes of the Ewells, who can quite literally be classified as poor white trash. The family live in a shack next to the town's rubbish dump, where Mayella's father Bob earns his living as a scavenger. A favourite saying of the liberal, tolerant Atticus, who believes that most people, when you get to know them, are essentially kind, is that you should never judge a man until you have stood in his shoes and walked around in them. (At times the tone seemed quite preachy, as though Harper Lee were writing an extended sermon on tolerance).
Atticus applies this principle of non-judgementalism not only to racial issues but also to various acquaintances whom his children dislike or disapprove of for one reason or another. He applies it to Boo Radley, a simple-minded and reclusive, but inwardly kindly, neighbour, to the cantankerous old Mrs Dubose and to the Cunninghams, another poor white family but one who have retained a greater dignity and self-respect than the Ewells. The title of the book refers to a saying of Atticus that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because they never do any harm, but it is a phrase which also refers to his philosophy of life. At various times several characters in the book- Robinson, Boo Radley, the children- can be seen as "mockingbirds", harmless creatures in need of protection.
One problem with the book is that Lee never really explores the tension between Atticus's liberal philosophy of life, and the problem of human evil as exemplified in the book by Bob Ewell, who is neither misjudged nor misunderstood but just plain wicked. Not only does he give perjured evidence in the hope of getting an innocent man sent to the gallows, and encourages his daughter to do the same, he also makes a vicious and cowardly attack on Atticus's children. Trying to stand in such a man's shoes would not, I feel, be a very productive exercise.
My other criticism of the book would be that it explores the question of racism from an exclusively white perspective, albeit a liberal one. For a number of reasons I think that "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a better book than "Intruder in the Dust", the most important being that Harper Lee's prose style is much more fluent and readable than Faulkner's often impenetrable sentences. Nevertheless, Faulkner creates, in Lucas Beauchamp, a black character who is much more well-rounded than any of those in Lee's book. Tom Robinson is little more than a plot device; the most prominent black character is Calpurnia, the Finch family's maid, who is that common literary stereotype, the faithful black servant. The book would have been better if Lee had given us a black perspective on the events she describes.
Those criticisms apart, I found this an excellent book, with a number vividly drawn characters, especially the spirited, loveable young Jean Louise and her father, who was memorably played by Gregory Peck in the brilliant film adaptation. Despite the limitations of his world view Atticus is an admirable character, who shows, in his defence of Robinson, not only great moral courage but also great physical courage as well. The immense improvement which has taken place in race relations in America since 1960 is owed, in part, to men like Atticus Finch, and also to women like Harper Lee who were prepared to confront the endemic racist attitudes of their society.
There is a reason this book will be read for centuries and centuries... November 12, 2008
... mainly because it is such a good story and so well written. Come to think of it, not much of this book is really about the rape and crime. It is about childhood, growing up and growing prejudice. It is about not only racism but also feminism. Scout, the main character, has such a lovely personality and I really started to like her. It was almost like I knew her and parts of me fell in love with Jem, her brother. I found parts of the slang a bit hard to read and it took a good 100 pages before the story had me that intrigued that I couldn't put it down. Sometimes you read a book and you really do realize why some books last with us and literature forever and why some don't. This book deals with human joy and suffering, ideals and rebels, crime and punishment and of course of race and sad part of the history of the south.
Even though this book was so good (or maybe because this book was so good) I thought it was very tough to get through. I read five pages then I had to just take a breather. But after 100pages I really found it hard to put the book down. I do think, however, that it will benefit from a second reading. Therefore it will not be long until I follow the adventures of Scout and Jem once again.
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