T
o Kill a Mockingbird was, in short, a wonderful tale. Told through the eyes of 6/7/8 year-old Jean Louise Finch, it delves deep into: Small-town life, racism, child’s play, the strangeness of how women act around one another, kindness, and human nature, among other things. When Scout’s father, Atticus, quietly defies the town by defending a black man, Scout and her brother Jem are exposed to the new, ugly world that adults live in.
I started reading To Kill a Mockingbird because I knew it was a classic for some reason. However, most of the non-Mark Twain “Classics” I have read turned out to be rather dry and full of the type of vernacular you might hear when somebody’s trying to act smart at a fancy dinner party. I encountered this: “If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
This book is amazing; in fact, amazing doesn’t seem to cut it. It’s dramatic; full of dry humor and deep emotions; it’s entertaining, which is what a book should be all about. For these reasons, I could not find any reviews with anything bad to say about it, even from people that sounded (at least online) like they needed to read a lot more books. It’s this kind of book that makes me want to read more; it’s this kind of book that also makes you want to go out and do something.
The most important thing that this writer says is not to judge people by your preconceived judgments or other people’s judgments, preconceived or not. This is displayed in the book in two ways: Tom Robinson’s rape case and Boo Radley (I have a feeling that the reason for the book starting when it did is to build up Boo’s character). Both these men are quite different than what they seem.
I learned something from this book, too: that most times the best way to communicate with people is to confront them with common sense and innocence, at Atticus said, “So it took ‘em an eight-year-old to bring ‘em to their senses, did it? Maybe we need a police force of children.”
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
isaac_k, April 24, 2007
T
o Kill a Mockingbird was, in short, a wonderful tale. Told through the eyes of 6/7/8 year-old Jean Louise Finch, it delves deep into: Small-town life, racism, child’s play, the strangeness of how women act around one another, kindness, and human nature, among other things. When Scout’s father, Atticus, quietly defies the town by defending a black man, Scout and her brother Jem are exposed to the new, ugly world that adults live in.
I started reading To Kill a Mockingbird because I knew it was a classic for some reason. However, most of the non-Mark Twain “Classics” I have read turned out to be rather dry and full of the type of vernacular you might hear when somebody’s trying to act smart at a fancy dinner party. I encountered this: “If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
This book is amazing; in fact, amazing doesn’t seem to cut it. It’s dramatic; full of dry humor and deep emotions; it’s entertaining, which is what a book should be all about. For these reasons, I could not find any reviews with anything bad to say about it, even from people that sounded (at least online) like they needed to read a lot more books. It’s this kind of book that makes me want to read more; it’s this kind of book that also makes you want to go out and do something.
The most important thing that this writer says is not to judge people by your preconceived judgments or other people’s judgments, preconceived or not. This is displayed in the book in two ways: Tom Robinson’s rape case and Boo Radley (I have a feeling that the reason for the book starting when it did is to build up Boo’s character). Both these men are quite different than what they seem.
I learned something from this book, too: that most times the best way to communicate with people is to confront them with common sense and innocence, at Atticus said, “So it took ‘em an eight-year-old to bring ‘em to their senses, did it? Maybe we need a police force of children.”
(10 of 15 readers found this comment helpful)