Question

Please provide a 3–5 sentence overview of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Accepted Answer

Narrated by six-year-old Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Maycomb, Alabama. Scout, her brother, Jem, and their friend are fascinated with Boo Radley, their reclusive and mysterious neighbor. When African American Tom Robinson is accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell, Atticus defends him in court, but Tom is convicted. Mayella's father attacks Scout and Jem, but they are rescued by Boo Radley. The story examines racial prejudice and the maturation of the young characters.

Answer

To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated by Scout, a six-year old girl who lives with her father, the lawyer Atticus Finch, and her brother, Jem, in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Jem and Scout, together with their friend Dill, are fascinated by their neighbor, a recluse called Boo Radley, whom they have never seen but who seems to be leaving them gifts in a tree outside his house.
When a black man, Tom Robinson, is accused of raping a white woman, Atticus agrees to defend him, even though this means disapproval and even violence against him and his family from the white citizens of Maycomb, some of whom come close to lynching Tom. During the trial, which is witnessed by Scout, Atticus proves that Tom's accuser, Mayella Ewell is lying but Tom is convicted anyway and later dies while attempting to escape from prison. 
Mayella's father, Bob Ewell, feels humiliated by his daughter's treatment during the trial and embarks on a campaign of violence and intimidation against the Finch family, culminating in an attack on Scout and Jem from which they are saved by Boo Radley who (probably) kills Bob Ewell by accident but is able to escape the consequences and return to his reclusive lifestyle.

Answer

The novel, told from the point-of-view of elementary age Scout Finch, tells the story of her maturation and growing awareness of injustice over several years during the Great Depression in Maycomb, Alabama. Pivotal to her moral growth is watching her father, defense attorney Atticus Finch, model integrity by mounting a real defense of a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Atticus's defense exposes Robinson's innocence and the injustice of Southern racism, which always privileged the word of a white over the word of a black, even when the evidence made it clear that the white person was lying. In addition to the trauma of the trial, Scout, her brother Jem, and their summer friend Dill begin to interact with the (to them) dread recluse Boo Radley, who they define, as whites in Maycomb do blacks, through the lenses of their own prejudices. When Bob Ewell attacks and tries to kill Jem and Scout on a dark night after a Halloween party in revenge for what he considers their father's humiliation of him on the witness stand, Boo Radley shows his true colors by coming to the children's rescue and saving them from Bob.

Answer

A first-person narrative recounting two years in the life of Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel of personal growth, social justice (and injustice), and friendship. While the writing employs generous amounts of humor, the core of the book is essentially concerned with the problems of prejudice and cultural bias in the 1930s American South.

Answer

This is interesting. Here goes: To Kill a Mockingbird is the story of a young girl named Scout whose father is a lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. She lives in a small Southern town that is shaken by the trial, because the man could not have physically committed the crime. He is convicted anyway, and Scout learns a lesson about life in the South in the Great Depression.

Answer

To Kill a Mockingbird is a retrospective view of the process of her own maturation by Scout Finch as she passes from the superstitious child who fears "haints" to the girl who learns that people are often from odd homes with strange values.  In so learning of the diverse thinking of others, Scout comes to understand the differences of people while at the same time she is made aware of the evil that men do"(Julius Caesar).  From her many childhood experiences, Scout acquires an appreciation for the wisdom of her parent and her friend, Miss Maudie, as well as a mature evaluation of her society.

Answer

The novel is a story of how two children learn more about the various kinds of discrimination that exist in Maycomb. This is something that they too are involved in, as the discriminate Boo Radley, just as others discriminat him and other characters in the novel. By the end of the novel, however, they are forced to see the dangers of discrimination and are able to overcome their prejudice, as they come to view Boo Radley as a human and a friend and not a bogeyman.

Answer

I'll put a slightly different spin on this.
This book is the story of how two children, Jem and Scout Finch, grow up and start to understand the world in more adult ways.  As the book starts, they are young children who do not understand why the world is the way it is.  They look at it from a very narrow point of view.  Through the Tom Robinson trial, as well as through their interactions with such people as Boo Radley, the Cunningham family, and Mrs. Dubose, the children learn to view the world in a completely different way.

Answer

Here goes. The novel tells the story of the lives of Scout and her brother, Jem, children growing up in Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930s. Along with their summer friend, Dill, the children become entranced with the idea of getting a glimpse of their reclusive and unseen neighbor, Boo Radley. Meanwhile, their attorney father, Atticus Finch, has decided to defend Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a local white woman, Mayella Ewell. The children get caught up in the trial, in which Tom is convicted and eventually killed trying to escape from prison. Jem and Scout become the targets of Bob Ewell, the father of Mayella, who tries to kill them one Halloween night on their way home from school, but Boo Radley--who the children have never seen--shows up to save them, killing Bob in the process.

To Kill a Mockingbird Questions and Answers
by Harper Lee

Please provide a 3–5 sentence overview of To Kill a Mockingbird.

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