Derek Does…Books: “Required Reading: To Kill a Mockingbird”

Everyone should read To Kill a Mockingbird.

It’s a perfect book.

It’s not perfect because its narrative is flawless, its characters are richly complex and fully realized, or because it is Shakespearean in its density. It’s perfect because it accessibly and effectively teaches readers some of the most important lessons they could ever learn. Throughout the text, Harper Lee imbues Maycomb County and her residents with wit, compassion, rage, ignorance, and heart. In doing so, she also challenges readers to look within themselves and access the greatest depths of their own integrity, empathy, and honor.

Lee’s first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. By 1961, she had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (“1961 Pulitzer Prizes”). By 1962, an Academy-award winning film adaptation was released (“To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)”). By 2026, it’s an indelible patch on the fabric of our culture. It’s a staple of high school English classes, been translated internationally, and staged on Broadway. All this to say, the novel’s importance, relevance, and power have never waned. I’d argue the reason being that its core themes are always in fashion - even when they’re at their most difficult to maintain.

Atticus Finch is the embodiment of integrity and is an integral part of the previously-discussed legacy of the novel. His stature as a figure of fortitude is longstanding. He is a single father raising two curious, bold, and rambunctious children amidst the greatest legal battle of his life and career. In the case of Tom Robinson’s alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, Atticus chose to take on Tom’s case for several reasons. Perhaps the most important and indicative of Atticus’ character was that he knew what would happen if he didn’t. He knew no one else would represent Tom. He knew that Tom wouldn’t get a fair trial otherwise. He also knew that if he didn’t take Tom’s case that he could never hold his head up or tell his children what to do ever again (Lee). This may seem hyperbolic, but what Atticus is addressing here is the importance of integrity. He knows that it’s the right thing to do to take Tom’s case. He knows that it’s the easier thing to do to avoid it. He knows he has to set an example for his children - an example that he can live with and feel proud that his children will follow. Truthfully, in his mind, he only saw one choice: take the case. In doing so, Atticus chose to face down the wrath of his neighbors, his town, and his own race to do what he felt was right - give a man a chance. To do his duty. Really, that’s all he saw it as - doing his duty as a lawyer who believed in the American justice system and the notions of right and wrong. The fact that Tom Robinson was a black man and Mayella Ewell was a white woman (let alone a Ewell - for the reputation they carried in Maycomb was not one of prestige) only factored in so far as Atticus understood that those barriers would keep true justice from ever seeing the light of day in that Alabama courthouse or in the hearts and minds of those 12 jurors. Tom Robinson had no peers to be juried by. Atticus, proving to his children that the only option was to do the right thing, became Tom’s only peer.

I know that so many first-time readers of the novel always question the title. “Why would someone write about killing birds??” Upon finishing the book, Lee explains who and what the novel’s mockingbirds are. Tom Robinson was a mockingbird - a character who did nothing “but make music” (Lee 103). They’re defined as simple, beautiful creatures who commit no harm and take nothing away from others. Tom was a mockingbird because he never meant anyone any harm - not Mayella after she attempted to pressure him into being with her, not Bob Ewell after he threatened him, and not even Maycomb County after she ostracized and damned him.

Jem and Scout saw Atticus exhibit this integrity and learned from it firsthand. Eventually, they learned the lessons on empathy that Atticus was trying to teach them as well. In two of my favorite moments from my favorite book, empathy becomes the preeminent theme. After enduring enough abuse from her vile words and destroying her garden in a fit of rage, Jem and Scout were forced by Atticus to visit and read to the vitriolic, hateful Mrs. Henry Lafeyette Dubose everyday after school to make-up for their indiscretions. It’s revealed that their reading was done to provide the nasty old woman with a reprieve from the debilitating withdrawal symptoms she was experiencing after years of being slave to painkillers for her failing body. Atticus reasoned that he wanted them to see “what real courage is…It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it though no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do” (Lee 128). Mrs. Henry Lafeyette Dubose died “free as the mountain air” because Atticus pushed his children to look beyond the invective woman down the road and instead understand the warrior fighting for her life to a disease slowly and venomously taking her life from her (Lee 127). Those children experienced bravery firsthand, but they were also forced to identify with someone who - up till that point - was an enemy to them. She insulted them, their father, and even their dead mother (Lee). Presently, the shoes of this “villain” wouldn’t be the only one the Finch children would walk around in.

Boo Radley - the mythic, ghoulish folkloric boogeyman of the Finch’s block wore the guise of a “villian” but was another mockingbird - like Tom Robinson. No matter how many local legends there were about him, no one had ever seen him - not recently at least. Essentially the novel’s entire first half was dedicated to the children’s infernal and often rapturous attempts at either trying to get the hermit to come out of his house next to the Finch’s or try to see him through the Radley family’s ragged, shuttered windows. From attempts to roll themselves inside tires up to the Radley porch or hold a fishing pole with a note on it up to their window, Scout, Jem, and Dill plotted and planned as much as they could to see Boo (Lee 41-42, 51-52). However, those plans eventually faded away as the wretched shadow of the Robinson case loomed over their heads. Conversely, it wasn’t until Bob Ewell attacked and attempted to murder the Finch children in the novel’s dramatic conclusion that Scout herself truly understood the lesson of empathy her father was trying to teach her. For it was Boo who saved their lives. He killed Bob Ewell. The official narrative fed to Maycomb County residents by Sheriff Heck Tate was that Mr. Robert E. Lee Ewell “fell on his knife” - the knife he would’ve used to murder two young children for the public embarrassment and indignation he felt from their father did he not have “a kitchen knife in his craw” (Lee 317, 315). In covering up the truth behind Ewell’s death, Scout began to see exactly what Sheriff Tate and her father were attempting to do: protect Boo or rather Arthur. “Well it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” she asked her father (Lee 317). Scout, in all her youthful wisdom, saw clearly the truth behind the lie they were all prepared to tell their friends and neighbors. In stripping Boo of his anonymity and replacing it with heroic status, his innocence, comfort, and way of life would ultimately be gone. In a way almost akin to Tom, Boo would’ve been put in a prison of his own - the prison of public scrutiny, attention, and praise. Tom’s death was dispensed by the state, whereas Boo’s life was saved by it.

Moreover, while Tom’s death was untimely, unjust, and unnecessary, it could’ve come even sooner were it not for the honor of Atticus Finch. As previously discussed, Atticus exhibited great integrity in taking on Tom’s case. Expressly, his honor and courage would be illustrative in facing down a would-be lynch mob who came for Tom. While waiting late into the night with Tom at the jail, Atticus “seemed to be expecting them” once the “four dusty cars” rolled up (Lee 171). Notice that - he was expecting them. Atticus, without much thought of himself or his own safety, sat there reading and waiting for them to come. He knew they’d come for Tom. He knew what they’d do to him. He knew he couldn’t let it happen. And so he sat there under the light of a bare lightbulb reading and keeping a terrified young man company as he waited for a brutal death to come find him. Instead, he was greeted with the honor of a man willing to defend him in a court of law and public opinion. Instead, he was greeted with the courage of three children standing with their father (and father-figure in the case of Charles Baker “Dill” Harris). Instead, he was met with hope.

All of this culminates in this understanding: the themes of Lee’s seminal work aren’t just themes. They’re the lessons that Atticus endeavored to teach his children at the same time that Lee was teaching them to readers. For me as a reader, this book taught me so much of what I needed to learn as a young person the first time I read it. Upon every subsequent reading, I found new teachings - both as a personal reader and as a high school special education English teacher. I looked at it in new ways with fresh eyes upon every reading. The lessons Atticus taught Jem and Scout enriched me as well. They taught me and provided me with a model of how to be a good, decent, and moral person. They taught me how to be a man. They taught me how to be a father. That’s all Atticus could do: be a man and a father doing his best - even though the system he was embattled with was one he knew was indomitable.

While Atticus would most certainly view the trial’s results as a deep personal failure, no other lawyer would’ve or could’ve gotten Tom as far as Atticus did. No other lawyer would’ve cared to. No other lawyer, no other man would’ve cared to put himself in the vulnerable position Atticus put himself and his family in. However, it’s because of Atticus and his efforts that Tom was actually treated like a man, that the jury even deliberated for as long as they did, that the impregnable system he was railing up against was dented even at all, and that the Ewells themselves were exposed to that crowded courtroom for the sad frauds they truly were. He knew he was wading onto a battlefield whose fight he’d never win. Yet, he fought anyway. Harkening back to what he told Jem in the face of Mrs. Dubose’s death, Atticus exhibited his own courage in the face of insurmountable odds. A fight he couldn’t win. One he knew he’d lose. He was the best of us - not because he won, but because of how he lost.

Works Cited

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Perennial, 2006.

“To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).” IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056592/?ref_=ttfc_ov_bk.

“1961 Pulitzer Prizes.” The Pulitzer Prizes.https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1961.