Books : To Kill a Mockingbird 1960

 To Kill a Mockingbird : The American Great Novel

I read & watched this great American creation in my High school English Class taught by Mr. Banks, he introduced my to all the great literature that I read as a teenager & made my fall in love with the written word. The classic American novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee was published on July 11th, 1960. It was Lee’s first novel and was an immediate success, earning her critical acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize the following year. The themes of the novel revolved around morality, racial injustice, courage, and the loss of innocence. The plot focused on the trial of a falsely accused black man and the characters were loosely based Lee’s own small town growing up in the segregated South during the Great Depression. 

In 1962, it was turned into a successful Academy Award-winning film starring Gregory Peck who plays protagonist Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout. To Kill a Mockingbird marked the film debuts of Robert Duvall, William Windom, and Alice Ghostley.

Songbirds and their associated symbolism appear throughout the novel. Their family name Finch is also Lee's mother's maiden name. The titular mockingbird is a key motif of this theme, which first appears when Atticus, having given his children air-rifles for Christmas, allows their Uncle Jack to teach them to shoot. Atticus warns them that, although they can "shoot all the bluejays they want", they must remember that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird".