Summary of To Kill a Mockingbird

Summary of To Kill a Mockingbird The movie To Kill a Mockingbird is based on the book by the same name by Harper Lee. It is based in a small town in Alabama in the 1930’s. It is told from the perspective of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, a six-year old with a big mouth and no filter. Her older brother Jim tries to keep her out of trouble and that’s a big job, since she is very feisty. Their father, Atticus Finch is a small town lawyer who seems to be the only person in town with much of an education. He agrees to take the case of a black man who has been (wrongly) accused of rape. As a result, he and his children are faced with the ignorance and prejudice of the townspeople. Meanwhile, a couple doors down lives a man and his son “Boo”, who are both mysterious. Rumors float about them, and Boo is said to have suffered from being held in the basement of the county jail for too long. The children sneak around trying to get a glimpse of him but they never do. Unbeknownst to them, he has been watching them and occasionally leaves Jim little gifts in the knot of a tree near their houses. After the trial, where the black man is wrongly convicted by a jury who is obviously prejudiced, he attempts to escape and is killed by police in the chase. Some time later, the two children are on their way home from a night function at school and are cutting through a woods when they are ambushed. Jim is knocked unconscious and Scout would have been attacked except for a mysterious man who attacks their assailant, then carries Jim home. The sheriff is summoned, and we find out that the assailant has been stabbed and killed, and it is Boo who has saved the kids. Atticus Finch immediately starts thinking of legal defense for Boo, but the sheriff refuses to press charges, saying justice has been done. He said it would be like killing a mockingbird, referring back to the earlier theme that mockingbirds do no harm to people, and if word got out the man would lose his privacy. Over the course of two summers, Scout and Jim learned a lot about prejudice and tolerance.