Books 2016: To Kill a Mockingbird

We selected To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee for our March Book Club book. It was just a few short days later that we would all learn of Lee's passing. 

The synopsis from Good Reads, states:

"The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature".

I had to read this book in 8th grade and I honestly couldn't remember much more then that the book was important because it depicted a southern town in grasps of Jim Crow and a white man trying to stand up for a black man. This time around I noticed a few more things. First, it is just good story telling. I enjoyed reading this book a lot more then I remember. Secondly, as important as those groundbreaking racial issues are/were in the book, they really take up such a small part of Scout's narrative. Granted, a lot of this has to do with her perspective as a very young girl, but I didn't realize before that this story takes place over years. In these years you see Scout learn a little about what it means to be a good daughter, a good niece, a good sister, a good neighbor, and a good human. Seemingly, in her narrative, her father defending an accused (but innocent) black man is just another lesson in being good. Thirdly, as ideal as Atticus' role is in this book, there is no ideal outcome. Lee doesn't walk away from what was often a harsh reality (and in many cases today, still is). It seems that very few people make it out of the story whole and I think that is important. Large and important events rarely leave us exactly as we were before. Fourth, over the 18 years since I read this last time I had combined Boo Radley and the accused. Because we so often focus on the trail when we discuss the book I'd just filled in the name from the only other character name that I could remember. Goes to show how small a portion that trial really is.

All in all, this book is well worth the read or re-read. It is good to sit back and take a minute to remember what we can look like at our best and at our worst. We each have to decide which version of ourselves we will strengthen and enlarge.