To Kill A Mockingbird Review


A trial, full of angry and unfair faces, who turn their back on people’s differences. A spooky haunted house, with a supposed mental freak living within it’s rotting wood and creaky doors. A dangerous threat that sends a shiver racing down your spine. Racism. What do all these things have to do with each other? And how can they all happen to be told by the perspective of a 9-year-old girl? Jean Louise is just a simple young girl in the 1930s. How will she and her family find solutions? This book answers these questions and more as it explores many different elements of life and racism. Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, is an intense, but beautifully written story that examines racism in a Southern town in the 1930s.

This is a story of a child’s life in the 1930s, where intense discrimination exists against black people. The story begins in an old Southern town, where a haunted house down the street fascinates six-year-old Jean Louise and her brother Jem. The plot then escalates, as they go to their cousin’s house, and hear their father, Atticus, being called horrible names because he took on the case of a black man in court. Racism becomes more evident when their aunt moves in, and forces the children’s black housekeeper to leave. Meanwhile the children get concerned, for people are outraged at their father as he tries to save his defendants life. Will Atticus be able to save his defendant, Tom Robinson’s, life? Or will the world around them forever discriminate against black people? You’ll have to read the incredible tale, To Kill a Mockingbird, to find out.

Be open to new ideas and people. It’s an important life lesson, and what I discovered from this classic. In the book, people who have black skin are treated unfairly because they are different. They are discriminated against in court, and in their daily lives. You see how awfully they are treated just because they are different, although we all are different in our own ways. Some characters in the story learn to accept people’s differences, and this is also what I learned. Even today, there is discrimination against lots of various people in the world, and this book teaches you to accept those differences. This is also very useful in the real world, for it shows you how to look past what you see on the outside, and get to know someone before judging. All in all, I learned to accept people’s differences.

In this book, there are many characters, and an interesting writing style. Jean Louise is the main character. She has an older brother Jem and a friend Dill, who lives out of town. Together, they make up a mischievous and playful threesome. The father, Atticus, serves a role model for Jem and Jean Louise. They have a maid, Calpurnia, and a neighbor, who also helps to guide Jean Louise. There are also many characters that play a part in the trial of Tom Robison, the man Atticus is defending. This is a book not like one I have ever read. One interesting thing about it is the point of view. It is told from Jean Louise’s perspective as she tries to grasp for understanding of all the advanced and intense happenings in her town. It is very advanced writing for a supposed nine year old, but she often says stuff like, “It wasn’t until many years later that I realized…” so it is really her looking back on her experiences from when she was nine or so. This book has many fascinating characters, and I enjoyed hearing the story from Jean Louise’s point of view.

I enjoyed this book very much. I have many likes with a few dislikes. It is very good writing, and I always get a clear picture of what’s going on in my head. This story also showed me how badly people are treated, and it makes me want to try to treat everyone fairly. The setting was interesting, and it gave me an incite to why people were so racist. However, one thing that I didn’t like all the time was the writing style. Almost everything was implied, Harper Lee almost never directly told you something, and since we live 50 years later after it was written, many things were confusing. It was hard to understand some of the very small concepts, and to know exactly what the author was implying. At the same time, implications made the book a little more interesting but also more confusing. Other than this one small problem, this book was a well-written, compelling novel with a twist of humor, which I would recommend for all advanced middle school and high school readers.

All in all, To Kill a Mockingbird combines elements of life, racism, and childhood into an unforgettable novel. These characters live through many things during the story, such as a trial, a spooky haunted house, and deaths. Mainly Jean Louise, an ordinary 9 year old, experiences these things with her family. You learn about issues still affecting us today. You may even change as you read this fantastic novel, which opens your mind to new thoughts you might not have know before. How will Jean Louise handle all of it, and will she change for the better?