To Kill a Mockingbird review

A heart warming experience! Perfectly capture a young girl's view on the world around her. This is certainly a book that can bring a smile to you. It just reminds me so much of my own childhood. I was overwhelmed by nostalgia after I had finished the book. 

It was a very famous book and I knew about it for quite some time. Before this book, I was quite suffocated by the sheer professionalism of Norbert Elias in The Civlilizing Process. It was so detailed that until now, I am still only midway through The Civilizing Process since I started it about 3 months ago. "I need a break!", I thought. And so To Kill a Mockingbird came into my mind. All I needed was an easy reading, and it gave me just that.

As I said, it is easy to read, the storyline is chronolgical and straight forward. For me, it is about a young girl learning about the society she lives in, learning about the subtlety of good and evil, the grey zone in between black and white (literally and figuratively). It is also about the relationship between a father and his daugther, Atticus and Scout in this case. 

Many things in this book resonate with me, and I think they probably would resonate with many other people too. While growing up, we all kinda have neighbours similar to the book, such as the creepy neighbour like the Radleys, the filthy one like the Ewells, the poor one like the Cunninghams, etc.. I like how Harper Lee pictured the interactions between these families, they are so down to earth and so close to us. I also like those little misconceptions Jem and Scout formed of Boo Radley and their fear of the Radleys. Just like Scout and Jem, we feared of many things when we were small and innocent, feared of things that to us nowadays seem like non sense.   

My favorite character has to be Atticus. He is a good father, the hero of the story, the ultimate good guy. His advices and teachings for Scout throughout the book are the gold and can be summed up by a word : empathy, as Atticus said to Scout,

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. 

About my favorite scene, it got to be the scene where Scout basically single handedly stopped the mob from hurting Tom Robinson. Scout didn't know about it, but it is very clear that, not Atticus, not Jem, not Dill, but Scout stopped the mob. If Atticus was the knight protecting Tom that night, then Scout must be the angel. It was a very high tension scene, a powerful scene. It was at the brink of violence, but the angel appeared in time and save the day. 

The following is spoilery, but Tom kinda chose to die. Tom knew and everybody in the book knew very well that there was no winning, no way out. It wasn't the warden who killed Tom, the society killed Tom. What struck me wasn't his death itself but the inevitability of his death.

Tom was a dead man the minute when Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and sceamed.

It is a tragedy of racism. I wonder it could have very well been a romantic story in between Tom and Mayella if it happens in modern day.

It is a sin to kill a mockingbird, as mockingbird does no harm to us. They are innocent and they need our protection. Although bad things happened and will happen again, but we must have faith in humanity, as Scout and Atticus did at the end.

Scout : ...Atticus, he was real nice...
Atticus : Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.