“To Kill A Mockingbird” Still Resonates Today
“It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”
Harper Lee published To Kill A Mockingbird in 1960 and it angers me that nothing has changed. For those who have never read it, or read it some time ago, let me refresh its pages for you:
The story is set in the 1930s and features a young girl, Scout, who lives with her brother, Jem, and her father, Atticus, in the Alabama town of Maycomb. Atticus is a lawyer defending Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of beating and raping Mayella Ewell, a white girl. Tom is innocent, in fact, Mayella’s whole story is twisted — she was the one forcibly touching Tom, not the other way around. When Tom tries to escape from prison, he’s shot by prison guards, seventeen times. Following the trial, Jem falls into a state of deep despondency, losing faith in justice.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”.
— Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
