To Kill a Mockingbird: A Tale of Courage, Justice, and Inequality

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis
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J. B. Lippincott warned Harper Lee that her first novel would probably sell only several thousand copies. To Kill a Mockingbird appeared on July 11, 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, and has since sold more than 30 million copies in more than 40 languages.

This review covers how the book was made, what it argues about courage and judgment, where critics push back, why school boards keep fighting over it, and how the 1962 film and the Broadway stage version carry it forward. Details of the trial appear in the middle sections.

The Author and the Making of the Book

Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, and died in the same town on February 19, 2016, at 89.

She studied law at the University of Alabama and left one semester short of a degree. In 1949 she moved to New York City, working in a bookstore and then as an airline reservation agent while she wrote. Her childhood neighbor Truman Capote became the model for the character Dill. She found an agent, Maurice Crain, in November 1956, and friends gave her a year’s wages along with a note allowing her a year away from work to write.

The first draft carried the title Go Set a Watchman. Tay Hohoff, her editor at Lippincott, spent two and a half years steering Lee through revisions, and described the early manuscript as “more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel.” The working title became Atticus before it settled on To Kill a Mockingbird.

Early reach came partly from Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, which chose the novel for a partial reprint. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction followed in 1961, and George W. Bush presented Lee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 5, 2007.

Her second book came much later. HarperCollins announced Go Set a Watchman on February 3, 2015, and it was published that July. It is an earlier draft of the material that became Mockingbird, described at the time as found in 2014 by Lee’s lawyer, Tonja Carter, in a safe-deposit box, an account some have questioned. Reviews widely described its version of Atticus as racist, which came as a shock to readers who knew him from the first book.

Maycomb, 1933 to 1935

The novel is set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression years of 1933 to 1935, and is narrated by Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, who is six when it begins. Critics file it as both Southern Gothic and a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story. The two labels pull in different directions: the first leans on secrets and a shuttered house, the second on a child slowly learning what the adults around her have agreed not to say.

Much of the texture came from Lee’s own street. The Radley house was based on a boarded-up house down the road from the Lees.

Atticus drew on her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, a lawyer who in 1919 defended two Black men who were hanged, and who took no criminal cases afterward. The origins of Tom Robinson are less settled. Scholars cite the Scottsboro Boys case, and some name Emmett Till, murdered in 1955, as another possible influence.

Courage, Spelled Out (Spoilers Ahead)

Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson, a Black man accused of raping Mayella Ewell. The jury convicts him despite evidence that the accusation was false, and Tom is later shot and killed in an attempted escape.

A weathered Southern porch in golden light with a swing, rocking chairs and a hardcover novel on the rail

The structure is the argument. Everyone in Maycomb, Atticus included, expects the verdict before the trial opens, so the courtroom scenes cannot be suspense about who wins. They test something else: what a person does when the outcome is already fixed. Atticus gives his definition to his son Jem in Chapter 11:

“…you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway…”

(Atticus Finch, Chapter 11. Source: SparkNotes, courage quotes.)

That is why the book resists reading as a story about winning. Courage in Maycomb is measured by whether the effort is made, since the jury’s verdict is never really in doubt. Whether that framing is generous to Atticus or a little too comfortable is argued further down.

Another Person’s Skin, and the Title

The book’s moral instruction comes early and in plain words, from Atticus to Scout in Chapter 3:

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…”

(Atticus Finch, Chapter 3. Source: LitCharts, quotes.)

The title comes from Chapter 10, where Atticus tells the children it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. Readers generally take the bird to stand for harmless people who are hurt anyway: Tom Robinson most plainly, Boo Radley in a gentler register. That is an interpretation rather than something the text announces, and it holds up because the novel keeps returning to the same pairing of innocence and the cruelty that comes down on it, whether through a jury or through a town’s gossip.

Where Critics Push Back

Early reviews split. The New Yorker praised Lee as a skilled and ingenious writer, while the critic Granville Hicks found the book melodramatic and contrived. Later objections moved to the book’s center of gravity: a white narrator, and a white father who acts as rescuer.

An empty 1930s Alabama courtroom with dark wooden pews and long diagonal window light

The blogger FictionFan, rereading it for a “Great American Novel” project in 2017, gave it five stars and still argued that its Black characters look, to modern eyes, like a product of “white wish-fulfilment.” The writer Kristian Wilson, quoted by HISTORY, argues that the novel should not be banned but that its place in classrooms deserves a second look. Defenders reply that its moral message is intact, and the book’s 2018 win in a PBS vote for America’s Favorite Book suggests many readers agree.

Atticus himself complicates the hero reading. HISTORY notes that scholars have long pointed out that defending Tom Robinson does not mean Atticus wants segregation ended, and that he describes himself as only about as radical as a segregationist senator. Go Set a Watchman pressed the same point from the other side, which is part of why the 2015 release landed so hard in Monroeville.

A Book Schools Keep Fighting Over

The National Education Association ranked it second on a 1968 list of most-complained-about books, and the American Library Association placed it 21st among the 100 most frequently challenged books of 2000 to 2009.

One of the earliest well-known fights came in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1966, when the school board said it would remove the book, citing its rape theme and calling it immoral. It reversed course after residents wrote letters to local newspapers. Lee herself wrote to the Richmond News Leader that the board’s actions made her “wonder if any of its members can read.”

The objections are not all from one direction. A PBS NewsHour roundup from February 19, 2016, drawing on the ALA’s list, records challenges over profanity and racial slurs from Eden Valley, Minnesota, in 1977 to Durham, North Carolina, in 2004, along with challenges in Warren, Indiana, in 1981 and Casa Grande, Arizona, in 1985 brought by Black parents and, in Arizona, the local NAACP. In 2013 the Plaquemines Parish School Board in Louisiana lifted a 12-year ban. In 2017 the school board in Biloxi, Mississippi, took the novel out of its eighth-grade curriculum while leaving it in school libraries, citing the discomfort it causes. James LaRue of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom told HISTORY that challenges have shifted from libraries toward curricula.

On Screen and on Stage

The film opened in the United States on December 25, 1962. Robert Mulligan directed, Horton Foote wrote the screenplay, and Alan J. Pakula produced. Gregory Peck played Atticus, Mary Badham played Scout, and Robert Duvall made his big-screen debut as Boo Radley. It earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three: Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Art Direction. In 2003 the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.

Lee approved of the casting. In liner notes for the DVD re-release she wrote that Peck had effectively played himself in the role. The original trailer, from the Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers channel, shows how the studio sold it:

On stage, Aaron Sorkin’s 2018 Broadway adaptation received nine Tony Award nominations and won one. A separate play by Christopher Sergel has been staged annually in Monroeville since 1990.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is To Kill a Mockingbird based on a true story?
Not a single one. Lee drew on her Monroeville childhood, her lawyer father, a boarded-up house on her street and her friend Capote. The origins of the Tom Robinson case are debated, with the Scottsboro Boys case and Emmett Till both named by commentators.

A boarded-up wooden house behind a sagging fence with a gnarled oak at dusk

What does the title mean?
Atticus tells the children in Chapter 10 that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. Readers take the bird as a symbol of harmless innocents who get hurt, such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley.

Is Go Set a Watchman a sequel?
It was published in July 2015 and marketed as a sequel, but it is an earlier draft of the material that became Mockingbird. Its Atticus differs sharply from the one in Mockingbird.

Why is the book challenged so often?
Objections have centered on racial slurs, profanity and the rape accusation at the heart of the trial. Some challenges, including ones in Indiana and Arizona, came from Black parents who saw institutional racism in how the book is taught.

Did the 1962 film win Best Picture?
No. It was nominated for Best Picture and won three Oscars: Best Actor for Gregory Peck, Best Adapted Screenplay for Horton Foote, and Best Art Direction.

Where to Read It

To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, the text discussed throughout this review and a separate book from Go Set a Watchman (affiliate link).

Further Reading

Sources

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