One might expect a book that dispatches moral lessons to be dull reading. And when Atticus agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman, they too become the target of hatred. When the book begins they are preoccupied with catching sight of the mysterious and much feared Boo Radley, who in his youth stabbed his father with a pair of scissors and who has never come out of the family house since. Throughout the novel, the children grow more aware of the community’s attitudes. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” It is Miss Maudie, for example, who explains to Scout why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. In this he is aided by the family’s hardworking and sensible black housekeeper Calpurnia, and their kind and generous neighbour, Miss Maudie. A widower, he teaches Scout, her older brother Jem, and their imaginative friend Dill, how to live and behave honourably. Shawn Thew/AAPĪt the centre of the family and the novel stands the highly principled lawyer Atticus Finch. Among Lee’s accolades were her 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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