Who is Harper Lee, and How is Her Life Reflected in To Kill a Mocking Bird?

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Who is Harper Lee, and how is Her Life reflected in To Kill a Mocking Bird?

Nelle Harper Lee, the famous award-winning author, was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. She was the youngest daughter of Frances Finch and Amasa Lee. Her father was a lawyer and a man of principles, serving just to his profession, sound, and fair in citizenship. Lee grew up as a tomboy, and through her childhood, she witnessed extreme racism and prejudice against the black and brown people of society. At the age of 18, she joined the University of Alabama and later the Oxford University through a student exchange program to study law. However, six months before completing her degree, she decided to be a writer and quit her studies. With the help of two of her brown friend patrons, she started writing short stories, which later on developed into a novel that showcases her own life and can be graded as an autobiography. The discussion, as follows, reveals how the novel acts as a reflection of her own life.

To Kill a Mocking Bird is a novel known and read worldwide due to its catchy theme of racism and social snobbery. Nearly all the facets of this novel are autobiographic. There is a sheer flavor of the author’s childhood and a clear connection to her family in the book (Shields, 2015). The protagonist is a girl named Scout Finch, 6-8 years of age through the novel (Shields, 2015), representing the same tomboy attitude as Lee in her childhood. This girl is raised with her brother Jeremy Atticus just like Lee, who had one brother too. The location is a small town of Alabama, the hometown of Lee herself. The Finch family has marked similarities with her own family, which flows through her writing. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, is depicted as Atticus Finch, the father who stands out for his bold nature in the novel, a lawyer, and a socially just, profound man of fair values. Like Lee’s father, his character has a great role in influencing his children to become more empathetic and considerate towards humanity and describes innocence as a value far above the social norms. Harper’s mother died when she was 25, and in the novel, Scout is two at her mother’s demise “our mother died when I was two” (Lee, 1960) because Lee thought she had not yet had enough time with her mother thus showing similarity of loss for them both.

The novel’s plot is a sweeping representation of Lee’s observation of intersectionality, especially of a trial which her father defended as a lawyer in favor of two innocent black men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Despite all the reasonable evidence, both the black men were convicted and sentenced to death. Scout’s father, Atticus, is also shown to stand for justice when Tom Robinson, a black resident of the town, is accused of raping a white lady. Notably, Scout was also made six years old, just like Lee when the trial occurred. Atticus defends this victim despite extreme pressure and serious threats from the community and refuses to abandon the cause at any cost. Harper and her family had to suffer a great deal, listening to gossip, being victims of judgemental sights, and filthy rumors due to her father’s courageous decision to advocate the right cause. Therefore, the characters of Atticus, Scout, and Jem are beautifully representing the absolute enduring in the situation, “Too proud to fight, you nigger-lovin’ bastard?” (Lee, 1960) is a statement by Bob Ewell humiliating Atticus proving the fact. Tom is characterized as a disabled man with one and a half arms during the court trial when Atticus uses the evidence to defend him, that he was not even able to perform the hideous crime (Crespino, 2018). Although there were many plausible interpretations that her father attacked the lady and no rape had happened (Crespino, 2018), the poor black man was still convicted and finally shot dead when trying to escape from the custody. The title of the book is symbolic of the innocence of this deprived class of society. Atticus in the novel is found attributing the killing of a mocking bird as a sin because they sing music to please people, and so was Tom in the novel, which was but only a good helping hand to his neighbor but was brutally accused and killed despite all his innocence due to the prevailing social snobbery.

The novel is the only literary work by the author. It is one of its kind because of its unique autobiographic nature and ultimately depicting social egotism and egoism towards certain classes. Although the life of Harper Lee is not known more from any other source than this novel because she was a remote and calm person, most of her life details are found connected to this very piece of writing which proved to be a masterpiece anecdotally as well as socially.

References

Crespino, J. (2018). Atticus Finch: The Biography. Hachette UK.

Lee, H. (1960). To Kill A Mockingbird. giove.isti.cnr. Retrieved July 15 2021, from http://giove.isti.cnr.it/demo/eread/Libri/angry/Mockingbird.pdf.

Shields, C. J. (2015). I am Scout: The biography of Harper Lee. Square Fish.