Read: To Kill A Mockingbird

June 6, 2010 at 1:20 pm (Uncategorized) (book)

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.

It took me about a month to read this book. Reading this book was more like a leisure to me. What attracted me to buy this book was because it was an award-winning book. As far as I’m concerned, this book has been a great American literature. I might not be able to capture the messages Harper Lee intended to bring, however, I think it was a good book 🙂

It talked about a girl, Scout, about her daily discovery of new stuffs, the society she was living in, and her family. She had a great lawyer-father, Atticus Finch who was a very fine man, full of justice and impartiality towards others. In the book, Atticus fought for an innocent Negro, who was accused of raping a teenage girl. He tried his best to fight for that black man, neglecting what others said about him (it was an era where the whites despised the blacks). I think Atticus was a great character and there’s a lot that we could learn from him. In this book, the racial inequality was so strong that although evident had proven the black man to be innocent, the jury still convicted him. Racial inequality could bring the morality of a society going down the drain.

There was a reclusive character in the book, called Arthur Radley, nicknamed Boo by Scout, her brother Jem and her summertime-friend, Dill. They thought he was rather an odd person, never came out from his house, and had tried many times to get him out of his house. In the book, Boo had showed his fondness towards the kids by putting some gifts in the hole of a trunk of a tree several of times. Towards the end of the story, when a guy wanted to hurt Scout and Jem, Boo came to their rescue and managed to save their life. Lee was telling us that we should never judge a person simply because of what he/she appears to be.

Well, I could only capture a small part of what Lee intended to portray in this book. I think everyone should give this book a read. It was an award-winning book, I am sure other readers could catch/learn something that I couldn’t see in this book.