To Kill A Mockingbird

*Sorry, pictures were not uploading.

A friend of mine gave me an original print from 1960 of the book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee about 6 months ago. It is a dark grey hard back with no print on the cover. The ends of the spine are worn down and there are pieces of thread hanging off it. The pages of the book are a yellowish brown color, and all the edges are crusty. It made the book all the more appealing to me but I never actually picked it up till last Saturday.

I had heard of this book before but I had absolutely no idea what it was about. The inside pages contained no introduction or review of the book. So the only way I could actually find out anything about the book was to start reading it. The story is written from the point of view of a 6 year old child. You do not realize until about the tenth page that the child is actually a girl. The story unfolds in small town in Alabama around the 1950’s. Harpers words read like poetry and her use of slang really brings the setting to life.



I guess you could say the core of the story does address racism but there is a lot more to the story than that. It is also about raising children, friendship, having a positive attitude, and standing up for what you believe in even against popular opinion. Most notably this book was about not making hasty judgments. I can see why it would have been very significant in its time. Harper holds back no punches when portraying the mentality of the characters through their dialogue. Racist slurs are spattered through out the book.

Each character is painted so well through Harpers words. There is just the right amount of intrigue and mystery weaved into every element of the story that makes ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ a complete page turner. The poetic element also makes this book a breeze to go though and you come out afterwards feeling as if you have gained something. Most books nowadays do not deliver that. It is a must read for anyone who enjoys classics.

In 1962 the book was made into a movie staring Gregory Peck. I did not know this until jut now. As I was reading the book I was imaging the scenes in my mind. The book is written in a way that would make it very easy to adapt to a screen play for film. But looking at these pictures from the movie, I am not at all tempted to watch the movie or see any further development on it. Books such as this, in my opinion, can not and should not ever be made into films. Although I think it would make one hell of a stage play. So now I have run out of books to read. There are no good English book stores in this city that I know of so I guess I have to wait till I go to Hong Kong next week.