I should be shot right between the eyes for doing this, because I can’t believe anyone could find anything difficult about “Mockingbird”. I first read it when I was about 11. But because it’s a masterpiece and Harper Lee’s only book, I think in deference to her that the book deserves to be understood. Check this out:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-143.html

Go to this link and you’ll find a detailed summary.

If this helps, then you can thank me by sitting down and reading the entire book on your own, then go find the movie on DVD (it’s an awesome movie and I guarantee it’ll make you cry).

It’s a wonderful book – even if you have to stay up late tonight to finish reading it, give yourself that pleasure.

Intererstingly enough Harper Lee never wrote another book. She was a contemporary and close friend of Truman Capote and helped him (although he didn’t bother to acknowledge it) with his research when he was writing In Cold Blood. They must have been an interesting team!

It has been suggested that In Cold Blood, which was Capote’s finest work, bears the marks of her writing and her editing. That will be something that literary pundits can argue about for the next fifty years, but it is interesting that his later work (after she died) was nowhere near as powerful.

If you’ve read half the book you know what the main event is and you know the time period. You can finish the book in two days, you just found the book boring and you don’t want to finish it, if you ever started it.

To summarize it: The book is about racism in the south. It is from the point of view of a girl, whose father happens to be a lawyer and defends a black person in court. The African-American is accused of raping a “white trash” so to speak( someone that is in the lowest level of society, but is white). The accuser is a girl who never felt any other man before, who lives in the middle of the forest with her father and siblings. This is important because it shows that society values “white trash” more than African-Americans. The father was given duty to defend the black man. And basically he is a hero, because he is putting himself and his family in danger by defending a black man. He is doing the right thing, even though society isn’t.

Although he loses the case, and the African-American is found guilty (even though he didn’t do it). The other african americans applauded the lawyer for his courage.

If you want more summarization go to:

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mocking/

www.thesparknotes.com