Presentation Transcript

1. To Kill a Mockingbird

   Harper Lee

2. Biography Born Nelle Harper Lee on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. The youngest of four children, she grew up as a tomboy in a small town. Her father was a lawyer, a member of the Alabama state legislature, and also owned part of the local newspaper. For most of Lee’s life, her mother suffered from mental illness, rarely leaving the house. It is believed that she may have had bipolar disorder.
3. New york, new york In 1949, a 23-year-old Lee arrived in New York City after not finishing college. While in the city, Lee was reunited with old friend Truman Capote, one of the literary rising stars of the time. She also befriended Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Martin Brown and his wife Joy.
4. Writing To Kill a Mockingbird In 1956, the Browns gave Lee an impressive Christmas present—to support her for a year so that she could write full time. She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft. The Browns also helped her find an agent, Maurice Crain. He, in turn, was able to get the publishing firm interested in her first novel, which was first titled Go Set a Watchman, then Atticus, and later To Kill a Mockingbird. Working with editor TayHohoff, Lee finished the manuscript in 1959.
5. 'All I Want To Be Is The Jane Austen Of South Alabama'

   An Interview with harper lee

   http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/july10/harper-lee-interview.php
6. When did you first become interested in writing? Lee: That would be hard to say. I can't remember, because I think I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything, of course, until I began working on Mockingbird. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write.
7. How long did it take you to write To Kill a Mockingbird? Lee: I suppose I worked on it in elapsed time of two years. The actual span of time was closer to three, but because of many family problems and personal problems I would have to quit at intervals and pick it up again. Two years would be it.
8. What was your reaction to the novel's enormous success? Lee: Well, I can't say that it was one of surprise. It was one of sheer numbness. It was like being hit over the head and knocked cold. You see, I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird. I didn't expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers, but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.
9. Southern culture Lee: Well, first of all you have to consider who Southerners are. We run high to Celtic blood and influence. We are mostly Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh. We grew up in a society that was primarily agricultural. It was not industrial, though it is becoming so, for better or worse. I think we are a region of natural storytellers, just from tribal instinct. We did not have the pleasure of the theater, the dance, of motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertained each other by talking.
10. It's quite a thing, if you've never been in or known a small southern town. The people are not particularly sophisticated, naturally. They're not worldly wise in any way. But they tell you a story whenever they see you. We're oral types-we talk. We're not taciturn or wry or laconic. Our whole society is geared to talk rather than do. We work hard, of course, but we do it in a different way. We work in order not to work. Any time spent on business is time more or less wasted, but you have to do it in order to be able to hunt and fish and gossip.
11. The absence of things to do and see and places to go means a great deal to our own private communication. We can't go to see a play; we can't go to see a big league baseball game when we want to. We entertain ourselves. This was my childhood: If I went to a film once a month it was pretty good for me, and for all children like me. We had to use our own devices in our play, for our entertainment. We didn't have much money. Nobody had any money. We didn't have toys, nothing was done for us, so the result was that we lived in our imagination most of the time. We devised things; we were readers, and we would transfer everything we had seen on the printed page to the backyard in the form of high drama.
12. Did you never live in a tree house and find the whole world in the branches of a chinaberry tree? We did. I think that kind of life naturally produces more writers than, say, an environment like 82nd Street in New York. In small town life and in rural life you know your neighbors. Not only do you know everything about your neighbors, but you know everything about them from the time they came to the country.
13. People are predictable to each other simply by family characteristics. Life is slower. You have more time to look around and absorb what you see. We're not in such a hurry that we can't do anything but go to the office, come home, have a drink, settle down, and collapse for the evening.
14. Of course, this kind of South is becoming a thing of the past…But it will take quite a while to take the small town out of the South-we're simply a region of storytellers. We were told stories from the time we were born. We were expected to hold our own in conversation. We certainly don't have literary conversations, we have conversations about our neighbors. Some of it's straight fact, some of it's a bit embroidered, but all of it's part of being tellers of tales.
15. As you know, the South is still made up of thousands of tiny towns. There is a very definite social pattern in these towns that fascinates me. I think it is a rich social pattern. I would simply like to put down all I know about this because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing. In other words all I want to be is the Jane Austen of south Alabama.
16. The Scottsboro 9 March 25 1931: In the depths of the Depression, a fight breaks out between white and black young men who are riding as hoboes on a Southern Railroad freight train. The train is stopped by an angry posse in Paint Rock, Alabama, and nine black youths are arrested for assault. Rape charges are added, following accusations from two white women who have also come off the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. The accused are taken to Scottsboro, Alabama, the Jackson County seat.
17. The convictions March 30: A grand jury indicts all nine "Scottsboro Boys." April 6-7: Before Judge A. E. Hawkins, Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems are tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. April 7-8: Haywood Patterson is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. April 8-9: Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, and Andy Wright are tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. April 9: The case against Roy Wright, aged 13, ends in a hung jury when 11 jurors seek a death sentence, and one votes for life imprisonment.
18. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCBV-GhyINY Scottsboro: An American Tragedy