To Kill a Mockingbird

‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.’ What is it about To Kill A Mockingbird that has made it an Empathy classic, a universal story that transcends its very specific setting in the “tired old town” of Maycomb in the American Deep South? We can all identify with the young narrator Scout- her curiosity and stubbornness- and aspire to be more like her father Atticus, a small-town lawyer, single parent and model of integrity. The plot hinges around Atticus’s attempts to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a local girl. Scout’s loss of innocence as she sees the small, tightly-knit community she has grown up with turn against her and her family is painfully sudden. What struck me about reading the book is how rigidly stratified Maycomb is in terms of class; even the comparatively young children know where they and their classmates are in the pecking order, what they are and aren’t entitled to; the family who are responsible for putting Tom Robinson on trial are the local ‘white trash,’ and far from popular in the town, but they are still very much aware of the power they have to destroy his life. While she may not always agree with the people around her, Scout learns to see things from the point of view of others, including the mysterious local recluse, Boo Radley, who initially fascinates her and her brother as a scary, Gothic figure. Once she has some small knowledge about him, Scout spends the last pages of the book trying to understand the world from his perspective, and her restless curiosity is channelled into trying to understand the world and what her place in it might be. The book has many champions, so what led to the book’s finally being dropped from the current proposed draft for British GCSE exams? Based on the universal themes it brings up, and the way it does so, I’d push for its re-inclusion.