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=Welcome to this wiki= To Kill A Mockingbird has been a classic and a much loved novel since it first was published. This wiki is to support your study of the novel through an understanding of the issues raised, the history behind the story and the history of the novel itself. Many wonderful resources created by others are to be found here as well as some more modern web 2,0 approaches to the novel. I hope you will explore and be enriched in your study. As much as possible I have tried to accurately give attribution to the sources of these materials. Please let me know if I have not given attribution where it is needed. This wiki is for study purposes only.



=Introduction to the Novel=

Sugar-water? Far from it.
===Harper Lee’s //To Kill A Mockingbird// highlights instances of heroism and courage in a small Alabama town riddled with the poverty and racial tensions characteristic of the south in 1935. The novel focuses on the Finch family over the course of two years—lawyer and father Atticus Finch; his ten-year-old son, Jem; and his six-year-old daughter, Jean Louise, //aka// Scout. Scout serves as the narrator of the book; her narration is based on her memories of the events leading up to, during, and after her father’s defense of a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Through Scout’s inexperienced eyes (she is only eight at the conclusion of the novel), the reader encounters a world where people are judged by their race, inherited ideas of right and wrong dominate, and justice does not always prevail. Through the novel, Lee strives to illustrate the racial climate of the South in the 1930s, a time when Jim Crow was the law of the land, racial segregation was entrenched, and mob rule could chew up and spit out the individual.=== ===By observing Atticus Finch’s responses to the threats and gibes of the anti-Tom Robinson faction and his sensitive treatment towards Tom Robinson and his family and friends, the reader—again through Scout’s eyes—discovers what it means to behave morally—to do the right thing—in the face of tremendous social pressure. By observing her father, Scout gradually discovers that moral courage is both more complicated and more difficult to enact than the physical courage most familiar and understandable to children.=== ===In short, //To Kill A Mockingbird// reveals the heroic nature of acting with moral courage when adhering to social mores would be far less dangerous. At a time in the South when it was outrageous and practically unthinkable for a white person to look at the world from a minority’s perspective, Harper Lee has Atticus explain to Scout: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (36); for Atticus Finch, climbing into someone’s skin and walking around in it represents true courage.===