Traveling with Books: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

It is a great classic of American literature, one of those books you can read and reread, and each time it teaches you something different. Through Scout's experiences, we travel to the southern United States, where outdated prejudices and injustices still have life. Today we are going to talk about Harper Lee's masterpiece (and one of her only two novels): >.

Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s. A sleepy, isolated town where the air blows - or rather blows lazily - and still displays the Confederate flags that will take time to disappear. I think it's important to highlight that Maycomb is not just a simple backdrop. It is one of the major protagonists of the book: without it, or rather, far from it, the story being told would probably never have occurred...

"The day had 24 hours, but it felt longer. Nobody was in a hurry because there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy, no money to buy it with, and nothing to see outside the borders of Maycomb County. Yet it was a time of vague optimism for some people: Maycomb County was told there was nothing to fear other than itself."

"Maycomb was overlooked during the Civil War, and the Reconstruction laws and economic ruin forced it to grow. It grew inward. Rarely did outsiders settle there: the same families intermarried with other same families until all members of the community bore a slight resemblance to one another."

"In Maycomb, 'a while' means a period of time that ranges from 3 days to 30 years."

One thing that is clear from the beginning is that daily life in Maycomb is marked by poverty (both physical and moral) and, of course, by racism.

But not everyone in Maycomb is the same; there are people who escape the shadow of prejudice and who, like many figures of this type in so many places, do not find understanding from much of their neighbors. Atticus is one of those ahead of his time. A lawyer, widower, and father of our protagonists: Scout, a spirited, cheerful, intelligent girl with a strong character; and Jem, her older brother who, throughout the pages of the book, finds himself thrust from the carefree days of childhood into the incomprehensions and injustices that only adult eyes can grasp.

"If there is only one kind of people, why can't they get along? If they're all the same, how do they go out of their way to despise each other? I think I'm starting to understand why Boo Radley has been shut up in his house all this time... it's because he wants to stay inside."

"Miss Jean Louise (Scout), you don't know that your father is not an ordinary man; it will take you a few more years to realize this, you haven't seen enough of the world yet. You haven't even seen this town, but all you have to do is go back into the courthouse."

At the beginning of the book, the author narrates the adventures of the two siblings along with their friend Dill. The target of their games and musings is a mysterious neighbor who never leaves his house: Boo Radley. It is on one of those carefree days when Atticus teaches them a lesson they would never forget:

"Kill all the blue jays you want, if you can hit them, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird (...). Mockingbirds don't do anything but sing their hearts out 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."

But soon an event shakes the foundations of Maycomb and attracts all the attention: Tom Robinson is accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Atticus is tasked with his defense. There's one detail that changes everything: Tom Robinson is black, and it won't matter if the truth is on his side, the color of his skin had already condemned him from the start. And here lies the key to the plot... vengeance, moral trials, deaths, and a few surprises will ensue.

"The prosecution's witnesses have come before you with the cynical confidence that no one would doubt their testimony, trusting that you share their same presumption (the evil presumption) that all black men lie, that all black men are, in their essence, immoral... You know the truth, and the truth is that some black men lie, some are immoral. But that's a truth that applies to the entire human species, and not to a particular race of man."

"The atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly the same as on a cold February morning when the mockingbirds were silent."

"A jury never looks at a man it has just convicted: none of those men looked at Tom Robinson."

I also don't want to reveal much more of the plot, but let me just say that Harper Lee drew from her own story to create Scout's: she herself was born in a town in Alabama, and her father was a cultured lawyer with strong principles.

And another curiosity: one of her great friends was Truman Capote, who, on more than one occasion, said that Harper Lee was inspired by the two of them to create the characters of Jem and Dill, and that one of her favorite pastimes was not going to the movies like other kids, but sneaking into the courtrooms to witness something much more real and less fantastical than what was playing on the big screen.

shook American society in the '60s so much that Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize with her first novel (the second would not come until 2015, a year before her death).

One of the things I liked most about the book is that the author captured the character and innocence of children realistically and tenderly, and that although she deals with serious themes that inevitably shake consciences, she managed to inject that touch of innocent, fresh, and spontaneous humor that is so characteristic of childhood.

"Atticus said that giving people the names of Confederate generals gradually turned them into drunkenards."

And of course, the entire narrative thread that revolves around the mockingbird, so important that it appears several times throughout the book and even gifts us with a final lesson.

"(...) Yes, sir, I understand. It would have been like killing a mockingbird."

It is incredible to see how a book set in the 1930s during the Great Depression, published in 1960 during the era of racial segregation (the March on Washington D.C. organized by Martin Luther King was in 1963), still remains relevant today, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In short, > is one of those books that we should all read, a small-great literary gem that touches the heart, brings smiles and tears, provokes thought, and gets under your skin. What more can you ask for from a book?

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