To Kill A Mockingbird (is a sin)

This is my all time favorite novel created by Harper Lee, To Kill A Mocking Bird.

It is a pretty story told from innocence side of a six year kid, Scott Finch (it’s a girl btw). The story itself is about a lawyer, who happen to be Scott’s father Atticus, was appointed to defend a black man slave. The black man was accused of raping a you white women and then later was proved to be innocence.

This is a story about racial justice and how Harper Lee want to say through Atticus’ words on the book that even we’re black or even we are white, we are born to be equal. No one can treat the other person with different skin color badly. This story is also tells us about prejudice and love. That we are not suppose to accuse a person if there is no proof s/he did that.

I browsed about To Kill A Mocking Bird on wikipedia and found this truly meaning of the book title:

Songbirds and their associated symbolism appear throughout the novel. The family’s last name of Finch also shares Lee’s mother’s maiden name. The titular mockingbird is a key motif of this theme, which first appears when Atticus, having given his children air-rifles for Christmas, allows their Uncle Jack to teach them to shoot. Atticus warns them that, although they can “shoot all the bluejays they want”, they must remember that “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”. Confused, Scout approaches her neighbor Miss Maudie, who explains that mockingbirds never harm other living creatures. She points out that mockingbirds simply provide pleasure with their songs, saying, “They don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.Writer Edwin Bruell summarized the symbolism when he wrote in 1964, “’To kill a mockingbird’ is to kill that which is innocent and harmless—like Tom Robinson (the black man).

I learnt a lot of moral stuffs from this book, especially about prejudice thing. I admit that sometimes I can grow a bad prejudice about someone in my head, and when I do that, I already making a bad accuse to that person. I feel guilty when I do that :(

But I try to not accuse someone in my mind. There’s gotta be a reason and there must be a story why s/he did that particular thing. For me, bad prejudice is the cruelest silent thing human being can do. It will lead to something more ugly.

Beside the moral story, what I like about To Kill A Mocking Bird is the quotes. What Jem, Scott, and Dill’s had in mind, how the do the conversation and spill out what they think, and especially, Atticus’ words. I like his character the most, and that’s because he is a wise and nice man. His words is really astounding in some way:

I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,” said Dill. “Yes, sir, a clown…. There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.” “You got it backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.” “Well, I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.” ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 22

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Atticus

And this the best part that always makes me smile, everytime I read it:

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus