Essay About Great Time And Larger Theme Of The Story

To Kill a Mocking Bird
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To Kill A Mockingbird
Ive never been to Alabama, but novelist Harper Lee made me feel as if I had been there in the long, hot summer of 1935, when a lawyer named Atticus Finch decided to defend an innocent black man accused of a horrible crime. The story of how the whole town reacted to the trial is told by the lawyers daughter, Scout, who remembers exactly what it was like to be eight years old in 1935, in Macomb, Alabama. Scout is the reason I loved this book, because her voice rings so clear and true. Not only does she make me see the things she sees, she makes me feel the things she feels. Theres a lot more going on than just the trial, and Scout tells you all about it. A man called Boo Radley lives next door. Very few people have ever seen Boo, but Scout and her friends have a lot of fun telling scary stories about him. The mystery about Boo Radley is just one of the reasons you want to keep turning the pages to find out what happens in To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout and her big brother, Jem, run wild and play games and have a great time while their father is busy with the trial. One of their friends is a strange boy called Dill. Actually Dill isnt really so strange once you get to know him. He says things like Im little but Im old, which is funny but also pretty sad, because some of the time Dill acts more like a little old man than a seven-year-old boy. To Kill a Mockingbird is filled with interesting characters like Dill, and Scout makes them all seem just as real as the people in your own hometown. Heres how Scout describes Miss Caroline, who wore a red-striped dress: She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop. Dill, Boo, and Jem are all fascinating, but the most important character in the book is Scouts father, Atticus Finch. You get the idea that Scout is writing the story down because she wants the world to know what a good man her dad was, and how hard he tried to do the right thing, even though the deck was stacked against him. The larger theme of the story is about racial intolerance, but Scout never tries to make it a lesson, its simply part of the world she describes. Thats why To Kill a Mockingbird rings true, and why it all seems so real. The trial of the wrongly accused Tom Robinson takes place during the time of segregation, when black people were not allowed to socialize with white people. In that era, when a white man said a