To kill a mockingbird - Analysis essays

To kill a mockingbird - Analysis essays Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Alabama. She studied law at the University of Alabama and then started to write.To Kill a Mockingbird? is her first novel. It was at once unanimously acclaimed by most critics, it won the Pulitzer Prize and some other awards, and was even filmed in 1962. In this book Harper Lee tries to bring to light the problem which had long been suppressed the one ofwhite men cheating black men?, as the main character of the novel Atticus Finch said, the problem of that colour-bar. The novel is a vivid and true picture of the Southern habitudes remaining from the slave-owning times. The extract represents the scene of the trial. Tom Robinson, a young Negro man, is indicted for raping a white girl. Judge Taylor appointed Atticus Finch, a notorious lawyer, hoping that he would do his best. Atticus was eager to take up that case to make sure it would be a square deal, though he was not once threatened by the Ku-Klux-Klan. And the story is told on the part of his daughter, Jean. Actually the trial is not the word, because everyone was silent in the court except for one man Atticus. He wasn't a thunderer, but he was sure to keep the jury out for a long time. This was a special case and Atticus behaved not like usual him and did some things he would never do under such circumstances: he unhitched his watch and chain, unbuttoned his vest and collar, loosened his tie and took off his coat. He spoke in an unusual way, with a voice that was not arid or detached. The case to his mind should never have come to trial, as it was too simple. He believed that the girl, the chi ef witness for the state, the same as her father, was guilty herself; and trying to put the evidence of her offence away from her, she tempted Tom Robinson, a Negro, to put him, her daily reminder of what she did, away from her. And Tom Robinson, on his part was guilty only for his temerity to feel sorry for a white woman. Atticus tried to shatter the assumpt...