To Kill A Mockingbird: by Harper Lee Mr. Davis ENG I

TKAM Journal Requirements For each section of the book (usually FIVE chapters) you will be assigned vocabulary terms and characters to know for that section. You will be quizzed over each section of the book. After each chapter in the book, you will complete a journal entry based on a variety of prompts. These entries are to help you reflect on what you have read and help connect your thoughts to some of the themes and social problems explored in the novel. These journal entries will be evaluated randomly with the focus centered on content and effort.  Each reading assignment has either a quotation or reflective question. For the quotations you are to tell me what page the quote is on, who is saying the quote and why the quote is important to the theme, characters, or plot of the story. There are to be NO generalizations. "SHORT" answers are 2 sentences or less; "LONG" answers are three sentences or more, unless otherwise specified. All of this material will remain in your TKAM folder and will be submitted at my discretion. It is YOUR responsibility to maintain your folder.

Biography: Harper Lee A descendent of Southern Civil War General Robert E. Lee, Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama to parents Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch. Her father worked as a newspaper editor, served as a state senator, and practiced as a lawyer in Monroeville. Ms. Lee studied law at the University of Alabama from 1945 to 1949, and spent a year as an exchange student at Oxford University. Six months before finishing her studies, she went to New York City to pursue a literary career.

In 1959, Lee accompanied friend Truman Capote to Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for his classic “non-fiction” novel In Cold Blood (1966). To Kill a Mockingbird was Lee's first novel, and although it was a huge success, Lee did not continue her career as a writer. She returned from New York to Monroeville, where she has lived avoiding interviews. To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into several languages, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck in 1962.

In her last interview, in 1964, Lee said she had "never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird", and that she was having a difficult time writing her next novel. She wrote a few magazine essays after Mockingbird was published, but another novel has never yet appeared under her byline. Now in her 80s, Lee lives with her sister Louise, avoids all publicity, declines all interview requests, and rarely makes public appearances.

To Kill A Mockingbird The book is set in the 1930s in Maycomb, Alabama, a fictional town based on Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and a father, defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a poor white girl, Mayella Ewell. The setting and several of the characters are drawn from life - Finch was the maiden name of Lee's mother and the character of “Dill” was drawn from Capote, Lee's childhood friend.

The narrator is Finch's daughter, nicknamed “Scout,” an immensely intelligent and observant child. She starts the story when she is six and relates many of her experiences, the usual interests of a child, and collisions with the reality of adulthood which intrudes into the sheltered world of childhood. Scout tells her story in her own language which is obviously that of a child, but she also analyzes the events from the viewpoint of an already grown-up, mature person. The novel follows two storylines, one focused on the children’s youthful fascination with neighborhood recluse “Boo” Radley, the other focused on the Finches’ involvement in the trial of Tom Robinson. These two storylines follow the course of some three years of the young protagonist’s life, and both exemplify the nature of Scout’s (and the author’s) style and tone.

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