Novelist Harper Lee has died at the age of 89. Lee won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for her acclaimed novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird essentially awakened a nation to racial inequities in our nation and has been used for more than a half century to teach tolerance and social justice issues in schools nation-wide.
Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, Mississippi. One has to consider how brave it was to undertake such a venture as Mockingbird. The novel and subsequent movie dealt with all the Southern taboos–race, rape, poor whites, mental illness, lynch mobs, generational poverty, and Anytown, Southern, USA.
Not all kids got to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I lived in a fairly progressive area of Atlanta when the book and movie both came out. I never read it nor saw it playing in neighborhood movie theaters. I sure knew when Gone with the Wind came to town, however. When I came back to Charlottesville, the book was not on my required reading list or even the supplementary list. I assume now the book was banned.
Ms. Lee tapped into the conscience of a nation like no other novel since Uncle Tom’s cabin. The difference between Lee and Harriet Beecher Stowe is great. Lee actually grew up in the region where Mockingbird takes place. She saw and learned as a child. Stowe’s novel relied on her imagination.
Rest in Peace, Harper Lee. May your mockingbirds live on and in the hearts of all of us who have read your novel. You are a once in a life-time national treasure.
Who read Watchman? Did Atticus’s fall from grace disappoint? What possible explanation for such a departure from the original character?
Whatever Watchman was, I think it would have been better that it not be published. Mockingbird had such an extraordinary clarity and unity of voice and tone, that Watchman couldn’t improve on that. It is especially problematic given the circumstance of its publication, where it was not at all clear that Miss Nell fully consented to its publication. We may never know how much she understood about that decision, but there is some reason to believe that it was a decision taken by hangers-on motivated by maximizing the estate, rather than for artistic reasons.
Having ventured that opinion, I hasten to add that it may be complete nonsense, since I have read only passages of the book, a few reviews, and heard others talk about it. It is completely uninformed by having spent time with the book itself. The good things that I have heard about it is that it does provide an insight into the culture and worldview of the Deep South in the 1940s and 50s.
Totally agree, Scout. I wish it had not been published. It rained on a certain sense of altruism and innocence–Scout grew up.
I also don’t think that Miss Nell would have wanted it to publish. She had years to do it before she became deaf and blind (and who knows what else) She didn’t. That tells us something. I think someone in there was opportunistic.
I think Mockingbird was probably one of the most important books of the 20th century, looking back on it. It defined a clear line of demarcation, in some ways, of where our consciences became raised, through the eyes of a little girl at a critical time in history.
I found it odd that some black groups wanted it banned because of certain words. Oh good grief. That is certainly short-sighted. What’s a word compared to an encapsulation of American social injustices?