#DLIVE PAINT THE TOWN RED TRIAL#

Robinson is found guilty regardless, and is later “killed attempting escape.” When Bob Ewell attacks the Finch children in revenge for the humiliation at the trial, they are rescued by “Boo” Radley.Įlement #1: To Kill a Mockingbird is a Very Good Story First – With Message Second Atticus carries out his legal duties with dignity.ĭuring the trial, Atticus weaves a story implying that Mayella tried to put the moves on Tom Robinson and was beaten by her own father for the cross-racial encounter.

#DLIVE PAINT THE TOWN RED TRIAL#

Robinson’s trial becomes the talk of the town. The Ewell family are low-class “white trash” who live in grinding poverty. In the meantime, Atticus Finch is assigned to defend a black man named Tom Robinson from a rape accusation by 19-year-old Mayella Ewell. It turns out that this socially isolated man is attempting to reach out to the kids by leaving friendly gifts for them in tree hollows in their neighborhood. They become interested in a recluse named “Boo” Radley. The three children explore their town in an innocent way. The Finch siblings’ mother has died and they are being raised by their father, Atticus Finch, who is an attorney. The story’s narrator and protagonist is a precocious, tomboyish girl named “Scout” Finch, who spends her time playing with her brother Jem and their friend Dill. The story takes place in fictional Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Throughout Mockingbird, there is rich character development and a good portrait of small-town Southern life.

This review is written under the assumption that most of its readers have either read To Kill a Mocking Bird or seen the film, so this summary will be brief. What, then, makes To Kill a Mockingbird so powerful? After some thought, I concluded that there are four elements that really made this story work.

Most racially-aware fiction is futurist-dystopian or science fiction, and while these genres well convey the problems involved and contribute all manner of ideas on the subject, they still fail to measure up to Mockingbird’s heavyweight metapolitical punching power. The fictional works of white advocates have yet to surpass the bar set by Mockingbird. As usual, the book is better than the film, but both works use the same methods to move towards the same metapolitical goal of “civil rights” and white dispossession. The book and the film are quite similar, and this review covers both endeavors. One of the greatest metapolitical efforts that has ever been brought to fruition is, in fact, the work of our mortal philosophical enemies – that is to say, Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960 and then turned into a popular film in 1962.

Dlive paint the town red