To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee (1960)
“The most-taught novel in American schools — and the most quietly devastating indictment of what justice looks like when the system works exactly as designed.”
At a Glance
Scout Finch grows up in Depression-era Maycomb, Alabama, where her father Atticus, a lawyer, defends Tom Robinson — a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The town turns against the Finch family. Despite Atticus's brilliant defense, the all-white jury convicts Tom. Tom is later shot dead trying to escape. Bob Ewell, the accuser's father, attacks Scout and Jem in retaliation; their reclusive neighbor Boo Radley saves them. Scout finally understands the empathy her father has been teaching her all along.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Has never gone out of print. Estimated to have sold over 45 million copies. Was for decades the single most-taught novel in American high schools — a status it has only recently begun to share with competing texts. Published at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, it reached millions of white Americans who had never read a sustained argument for racial equality framed as a story about a father and his children.
Diction Profile
Primarily colloquial — Scout's child voice, Southern dialect — with formal legal language in trial scenes and lyrical passages in reflection
Moderate