To Kill A Mockingbird Biography

| TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD | | HARPER LEE |

| TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD | | HARPER LEE |

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
101
October 25, 2010 Sharon Goodwin
East Millinocket
Fall Semester
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
101
October 25, 2010 Sharon Goodwin
East Millinocket
Fall Semester

Lee Haper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1960
--Summary of the plot. To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about two children Jem age 10, Scout who is 6, and their father Atticus Finch, who is a lawyer. They live in Maycomb, a small town located in Alabama in the 1930 during the depression. The story starts out with scout remembering how her brother Jem, short for Jeremy had broken his arm. Scout tells the
story from her point of view and the whole story is in a 3 year time span. Jen and Scout had lived in Maycomb all of their life and knew of no other place.
They had lost their mother when Scout was only two years old. There was a women by the name of Calpurnia that helped take care of them, she did all the cooking and cleaning. Calpurnia was black and had been with the children before Scout was born. It is in the summer that the children met a boy by the name of Charles Baker Harris. Charles went by the nick name of Dill; he was small for his age of 7. Dill spent his summers living with his aunt Rachel across the street from Jem and Scout. The children are fixated with a neighbor by the name of Boo Radley. Boo it seems was a kind of legend of the town, people spoke of how he was kept locked in his home and only came out at night to wreak havoc on the neighborhood. They heard that at one time Boo had stuck a pair of scissors into his father’s leg, and of course to them this meant that he tried to kill his father making him ever more interesting. The children had never seen Boo as he did not come out of the house. They would make –up stories about Boo and act them out. When autumn drew near Dill left to go back home to Meridian Mississippi. It was time for scout to finally start school and
she could hardly wait. Her first year was hard for her, Miss Caroline a new teacher was not happy that Scout could already read. She was told that she was not to let anyone else teach her to read, this upset scout and she was embarrassed. There were many lessons learned that year for everyone. One day when their father came home he sat the two of them down and told them that he was defending a man by the name of Tom Robinson. Atticus told them that they would hear things that might be hard to ignore but that they should hold their head up and not let it bother them. As time goes on you find that Tom Roberson, a black man is on trial for Rape and assault of a white girl by the name of Mayella Ewell. This being the south in a time of racial upheaval you can imagine how people were in an uproar. Several time scout had to keep her fights to herself instead of fighting about the things that were said about her father. During the trial the children sneak into the courthouse and see their father defending Tom. Jem is very upset at the way the trial seems to be going, he sees how much prejuce there really is in his small town. Bob Ewel, l Mayella’s father gets to say his perception of what happened, said that he came home and looked in the window to see Tom on top of Mayella and yells at Tom, and then ran away. As Mayella takes the stand and gives her testimony you can tell that she is uneducated and mentally younger than her 19 years of age. As she continues to testify you can tell that she has had a hard life, her mother died when she was very young and because she was the oldest, it was her job to care for her brothers and sisters. Atticus asked her what happened the day she was attacked. Mayella said that tom got her around the neck cussing and saying dirt. She told Atticus that he had choked her and took advantage of her saying that he beat her about the face. Although there seemed to be some confusion of which side of her face was injured. Finally she declares it was her left eye that he blackened, this was the point in which Atticus has Tom stand up and you see his left arm was shorter than the other and hanging limply to his side. Mayella still claims that he raped her and refused to say anything more about it. The children learn what it really means to be black in their small world. Tom is convicted even when he was proven of not being able to commit the crime that was levied against him. Tom is sent to prison and not being able to conform to that life and tries to scale the wall, later you find out he is shot and killed trying to escape. Bob Ewell, the father of Mayellal that accused Tom, held a grudge against Atticus and at one time even spit on him to show his contempt. Towards the end of the book there is a big Halloween celebration that Scout is involved in and has to go onstage as a ham. When the night is over Jem walks her home through the field behind the schoolhouse. The night is dark and they have no way to see much as they make their way home. They keep hearing a sound of someone following them and think it is their friend Cecil trying to scare them. When the children are attacked by Bob Ewell someone comes to their aid, Boo Radey. During the attack on the children , Jem’s arm is broken and he becomes unconscious. Boo picks him up and carries him home with Scout following behind. Dr.Reynolds is called to care for Jem and the sheriff is also notified. When the sheriff goes to investigate where the attack happened he finds Bob dead with a knife stuck in him. He tells Atticus that Bob fell on the knife when he fell over a root; Atticus knows this is not true and insinuates that Boo did it when he fought with him saving the children. The sheriff said to just leave it as it is, that nothing good would come out of putting Boo in the middle of it all. So Scout walked Boo Home and stands there on the porch and sees the world as Boo does, and as she walks home she thinks of everything she has learned about her world and how much she feels she has grown.

--Concepts
1. Conformity: The process of maintaining or changing behavior to comply with the norms established by a society, subculture, or other group. Jem and Scout noticed that Calpurnis spoke differently when she was around her friends at church. She lived a separate existence when she was outside of their home. Calpurnis tells them that her talking different would be “putting on airs”, and that it would greatly aggregate her friends. ( 142,143) “That’s why you don’t talk like the rest of ‘em,” said Jem. “The rest of who?” The rest of the colored folks. Cal, but you talked like they did in church…” That Calpurnia lead a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel on, to say nothing of her having command of two languages.
2. Discrimination: While prejudice is an attitude, discrimination involves overt behavior directed towards an individual or group on the basis of characteristics such as race, ethnicity, sex, age, or look. Although prejudice may be the basis for such action, it does not have to be present for people to deny other people access and opportunity to such things as jobs, housing, or education. Discrimination may range from name-calling to genocide. When Calpurnia took Jem and Scout to her Church women named Lula stopped her and said that she had no right to bring white children to their black church. Lula was unhappy to see the children as she felt that they did not belong there. She thought they should go to their own church with others that were white. ( 136) Lula stopped, but said, “You ain’t got no business bring white chillum here---they got their own church, we got our’n.
3. Looking-glass self: Charles Horton Cooley’s term for the way in which a person’s sense of self is derived from the perceptions of others. When Miss Carolin learned that Scout could read, she made her feel that she had done something wrong. Scout felt that Miss Carolin’s opinion of her was right and she saw herself as her teacher saw her. (81,82) “ I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.
4. Informal norms: unwritten standards of behavior understood by people who share a common identity. The Radley’s kept to themselves, they did not go to church, which was the principal recreation, they worshiped at home. Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street for mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, she never joined even a missionary circle. This was considered the opposite of what the other neighbors did. (10) “The Radleys, welcome anywhere in town kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb”.
5. Prejudice: Prejudice is and attitude regarding a prejudgment. Prejudices may be positive as well as negative, in that people may have prejudgments in favor of something or someone as well as against something or someone. At any rate, prejudice is learned from the groups that an individual participates in. One time scout got into an argument with a child by the name of Cecil Jacob. He told Scout that “her father defended niggers”, this was the first time Scout learned that her father was coming under fire for defending Tom Robinson. She did not completely understand what was going on but she knew that her father was a good man and that Cecil should not be able to get away with saying bad things about him defending a black person. (85)
6. Resocialization: The process of learning a new and different set of attitudes, values, and behaviors from those in one’s background and experience. Scout has a fight with Cecil in the school yard about her father being Tom’s lawyer. Cecil tells Scout that her father was a disgrace and that Tom should hang. Instead of fighting with her she remembers what her father said “to walk away to fight with her head instead of her hands”. Not wanting to let her father down she does walk away, as she does this she tries to understand how her father can defends someone that will make him look unfavorable to his friends and neighbors. ( 87) “But remember this, no matter how bitter things get they’re still our friends and this is still our home.”
7. Self-Concept: The totality of our beliefs and feelings about ourselves. Atticus talked to Scout about his defending a Negro; he said; “that if he didn’t defend Tom he couldn’t hold his head up in town”. That he would not be able to tell her or Jem not to do something if he didn’t do what was right. Atticus tried to help scout understand his point of view and he has to live with his actions. (86)
8. Values: Collective ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable in a particular culture. Tom was found guilty of rape and assault of Mayella Violet Ewell even though the evidence proved he could not have done it. The jury still believed that white people were always above the black. (241) “A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. The Foreman handed a piece of paper to Mr. Tate who handed it to the clerk who handed it to the judge… I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury; “Guilty …guilty… guilty…guilty…”. I peeked at Jem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each “guilty” was a separate stab between them.
9. Role-taking: The process by which a person mentally assumes the role of another person in order to understand the world from that person’s point of view. After boo saves Jen and scout from Bob Ewell, scout walks Boo home and stands on his front porch. She sees the neighborhood as Boo does, her home and the porch swing, Miss Crawford’s home. Scout see’s the seasons change, how the children played on the front yard” enacting a strange little drama of their own”. How winter came and the children shivered at the gate. Scout knows her father was right, you never know a man till you stand in his shoes. Being on Boo’s front porch proved that to her on that early morning. (321-322) “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk in them”.
10. Social devaluation: A situation in which a person or group is considered to have less social valve than other individuals or groups. Francis, scouts cousin told he she was a nigger-lover, and Scout hit him in the mouth.
Her uncle proceeded to spank her for the offence. Later when her uncle goes to talk to her about it she tells him that he never gave her a chance to tell her side of it. That he only listened to Francis’s side of the disagreement. ( 97-98) “You gonna give me a chance to tell you? I don’t mean to sass you, I’m just trying’ to tell you.” Uncle Jack sat sown on the bed. His eyebrows came together, and he peered up at me from under them. “Proceed,” he said. I took a deep breath. “Well, in the first place you never stopped to gimme a chance to tell you my side of it—you just lit right into
me.
--Conclusion:
I found this literature to be a true to its era. The social concepts proved to be hard at times to really understand. This book looks like an easy read, but it has a lot of undercurrents to the story. I find that I can relate to it, I grew up in a very reual area in Kingston, Ma. , and there was a lot of prejudice of the blacks in my family. Not a proud thing to admit to, but you can’t pick your family. Their neighbors were close and everyone knew everyone, which can be a good thing. I think it was a time of major changes and this book portrays it as such. This is my second time reading this story and I know that it will not be my last.