To Kill A Mockingbird

Book by Harper Lee, 1960

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    To Kill A Mockingbird! A well-known book by any account, and so far, definitely a book to add to your collection, booknook, library, or wherever you keep books. It's proven to be well-written, colorful, humorous, and compassioned brilliantly. Harper Lee does a fantastic job fleshing out the characters and building the Southern world from the perspective of a child, yet with the maturity of an adult, blending together, not clashing. 

    It's a bit confusing to have this main character, Scout. Harper Lee gives no allusions or mentioning that Scout is a girl, rather than a boy. After about thirty or so pages, it briefly mentions Scout's gender being female, and hints at it later. This is mainly due to the fact that the book is completely first-person. Not to mislead any of you, though; this book and it's characters are thing to be treasured. Harper Lee writes it all brilliantly and doesn't stop for anything. The characterization of the cast is simply amazing. Scout, Jem, and Dill all are believably written as the children they are. Jem is the oldest, a boy at the age of 10 and Scout's brother. Dill is visiting from a different state and seems to be a peculiar kid, though unrelated to Scout and Jem. Scout's the youngest, but seems to be a tough nut. She asserts herself above other children, like Dill. For example, Dill goes off into the childish fantasies of declaring Scout to be "the only girl he will ever love", followed by Scout's dainty response."He staked me out, marked me as his property...I beat him up twice but that did no good." (Lee 46) This situation very much shows the mindset of Scout, a girl who seemed able to assert a certain dominance. 

    Playing off that note, To Kill A Mockingbird has so far had a subtle irk with women. Besides the skirmishes Scout seems to live for, Harper Lee writes about their neighbor, a cake-making, cattle-growing little old lady, Miss Maudie. A Baptist, Miss Maudie discusses with Scout how some of the more extreme Baptists feel about women, "Foot-washers believe anything that's pleasure is a sin...thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally, you know." (Lee 49) Miss Maudie calls them foot-washers because of their tendencies and extremist religious ways. Basically, women are seen as a "pleasure" and the foot-washers don't seem to like that. At all. Furthermore, Harper Lee writes about the interactions between Scout and Jem, her older brother, after they had seemed to drift apart as siblings, their ways of thinking straying from each other. Scout was protesting Jem and Dills' scheme to lure out a man named Boo Radley, who had a troubled past. "'Jem, please--' 'Scout, I'm tellin' you for the last time, shut your trap or go home--I declare to the Lord you're getting more like a girl every day!'" (Lee 56) Scout's position as a sibling is being overshadowed by her gender. Back when this was written, the attitude against women was different. They were seen as weaker, and using the term as a term was argument enough.