Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is near the top of the list of most-beloved American novels. Set in Depression-era Alabama, it is the story of six-year-old Jean Louise Finch, better known as Scout; her older brother, Jeremy, nicknamed Jem; and their father, Atticus Finch, a middle-aged lawyer whose brave defense of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, provides the fulcrum of the plot. Told through Scout’s eyes, the narrative renders small-town experience through the hues of wonder and worry that color childhood, and through the lenses of illusions large and small: ideals of justice, idealization of a father, confidence that the wheels of the world might well turn things right in the end, whatever obstacles are strewn in their path. The people of the town, and especially the Finches’ neighbors, among them the mysterious Boo Radley, are vivid presences; their personalities provide a largely friendly context for Scout’s upbringing, even as she comes to realize the racial prejudice and violence that shadow the community she inhabits.
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