Critical Review To Kill A Mockingbird

Critical Review Essay

All good books or movies must have three specific qualities: believable characters, a well-written plot, and a universal theme. “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee easily fulfills these three specific qualities, with its curious children and stern adults, its plot that is kept together rather than scattered about, and its strong theme of anti-racism and destroying innocence. Set during the Great Depression, this book teaches its readers why it is ‘a sin to kill a mockingbird’, or in other words, why we should not discipline or blame the innocent.The main characters, Jean “Scout” Louise Finch and Jeremy Finch, brother and sister, are great examples of believable characters, because they are curious and like to do

Their father Atticus is an old lawyer, and acts like most parents do, as he disciplines his children but also encourages them to work hard and ignore others’ criticisms. Being a lawyer, Atticus must defend many people's cases, but most controversial one is the Tom Robinson case. Tom was an African American who was accused of raping a 19-year-old girl, and though he was clearly innocent, he was convicted because of his race. The characters’ faith in justice is shattered as Tom is sent to prison, where he is shot and killed. The father of the ‘victim’ seeks revenge for humiliating his daughter on trial, and attacks Atticus’s children one night, breaking Jeremy’s arm and knocking him unconscious. Jean struggles to get away, and is helped by a stranger, who stabs and kills the clearly drunken attacker with his own knife, and carries Jeremy home. The characters learn the mysterious person was Arthur Radley himself, and the sheriff decides to keep the attention away from the timorous man by claiming the drunk man fell onto his own knife. With the realistic situations and characters, and universal theme that everyone can learn from, it makes it easy for us to call “To Kill

In TKaM, Lee projects many universals themes such as good versus evil, social inequality, racism, bravery, and many more. The main one everyone who has read the book understands is innocence. Tom Robinson, the innocent African American man who was convicted of raping a nineteen-year-old girl, is the symbol of innocence. The title “To Kill a Mockingbird” means ‘to kill innocence’, and that is exactly what Tom Robinson is the symbol of. When Tom is shot and killed in prison after he was wrongfully convicted just because of his race, our faith, along with the characters’ faith in justice, is shattered. To kill a mockingbird, an innocent animal, is a sin. To kill an innocent person is a sin. Therefore, to kill innocence is a sin, according to this novel. With a universal theme that we can all understand, this novel by Harper Lee is in fact, a good