INSIDE THE cover of a 2006 paperback edition of the book the blurb reads: “Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, a village that is still her home. She attended local schools and the University of Alabama.
“Before she started writing she lived in New York where she worked in the reservations department of an international airline. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, two honorary degrees, and various other literary and library awards.
“Her chief interests apart from writing are 19th-century literature and 18th-century music, watching politicians and cats, travelling, and being alone.”
With this somewhat terse statement, Harper Lee, as behoves the true storyteller, disappears completely and the narrator, eight-year-old Miss Jean Louise Finch alias ‘Scout’, takes us by us by the hand and lays before us one of the most iconic and powerful literary narratives in American, or indeed in any, literature, dealing with racial prejudice and injustice in the Southern States.
Seduced by the sheer simplicity and innocence of the eight-year-old narrator, the reader comes to know the town and county of Maycomb wherein we find the Finchs - Scout, her brother Jem, and lawyer father Atticus, their black servant Calpurnia, and the children’s summertime companion, Dill.
Exuberant, funny, feisty, the story is that of a normal happy childhood, until Atticus is given a job all white lawyers in the Southern States dreaded, the defence of a young black man for the rape of a 19-year-old white girl.
Gradually the harsh realities of racial hatred and prejudice make themselves felt and the tensions within the community become more acute, reaching their inevitable conclusions.
At no stage during the novel does the author intrude. Brilliantly using the three children as her conduits, she builds a comprehensive picture of all the social classes of Maycomb County; their subtle differences as Scott, Jem and Dill move in and out of the communities with ease, all the time adding to their – and our – knowledge of the deep seated prejudices inherent in the community.
The Sunday service at First Purchase African ME Church, redolent of the Black community’s raw emotions and fears, is in stark contrast to the simpering hypocrisy of Aunt Alexandria’s (whose bark, it must be said, proves to be worse than her bite ) Missionary Circle Meeting, whose members, all female and white, were “fighting the good fight all over the house”.
The various encounters with the town’s myriad eccentrics allow the author to fill in the gaps between these two extremes without in any way ruffling the pace of the narration.
Perhaps the most curious and loveable such character is Dolphus Raymond who appears at one of the novel’s tenser moments. Because he is continuously sipping from “a paper sack”, it is presumed that he is “in the clutches of whiskey” and an evil man.
In dramatic, and rather funny, fashion, the children discover that the “paper sack” contains nothing more lethal or potent than Coca Cola. Raymond figures that by giving himself a false reputation it in fact gives him more freedom than anybody else in Maycomb.
It is this sense of humour as well as a deep sense of humanity that underline the greatness of To Kill A Mocking Bird. It is difficult to believe the book first appeared as recently as 1960 and that it is celebrating its 50th year in print this year.
Although the time scale of the novel is from 1935 to c1942, it has a vivid contemporary feel about it, suggesting that the racial hatreds and prejudices it highlights are still very much present in society.
For this reason, and indeed for the pure enjoyment of a great book, it is worth revisiting this iconic classic, reminding us that the mocking bird should always be allowed to sing.
