To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee
Fiction
I feel that I don’t have to
summarize the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird because everyone knows it,
but my obligation is stronger than the novel’s ubiquity. Scout, a seven year
old girl and the narrator, provides an innocent and naïve view of what happens
in her southern town of Maycomb, Alabama. One of the major events she observes
involves the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been falsely accused
of raping a white woman. The evidence
supports Tom’s case, but the jury of all white men vote to convict him. Later,
prison guards shoot Tom seventeen times as he tries to escape.
This fictional event has become infamous both
because it was shocking, but also because it raises the question of whether the
justice system is still biased. We Americans like to believe that our justice
system treats all people equally, which is why what happens to Robinson is so
shocking. Furthermore, Robinson’s fate
makes the reader wonder whether it is possible to achieve justice in a society
with differences in power even today. People at the time the book was published
believed that these differences were unfair, and they still do today, which is
one of the reasons Harper Lee’s writing still resonates.
Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a
Mockingbird has echoed powerfully over the years because it addresses
issues which transcend time. The book forces the reader to question the meaning
of justice and the possibility of achieving it. Lee’s writing is timeless
because the events that occur in her book are not restricted to a certain time
period. The Tom Robinson case could happen today. Nearly 55 years after its
publication, To Kill a Mockingbird still moves readers with its story of
injustice and the loss of innocence.
