To Kill a Mockingbird
This article is about hunting birds. For instructions on how to insult dangerous breasts, see To Mock a Killingbird.
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To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming of age-legal drama-sci-fi-thriller about the loss of innocence set in 1930's Alabama. Although credited to Harper Lee as her only novel, it is believed by many literary scholars and critics to have been ghost written by the restless spirit of Sigmund Freud possessing Truman Capote during one of his infamous lost weekends.
Plot summary[edit]
Atticus Finch is just a simple southern lawyer with a gift for sweet talking living down south with his two younguns: his oldest, the six year old Scout and her lil brother Jem after the passing of their ma. Scout is a tomboy that fails to conform to the established gender norms of the community and insists she's going to make her way in life with a gun and her wits end pretending to be a man and enlisting in the army. Atticus takes Scout bird hunting in in the wilderness, but warns her never to kill a mockingbird, because they inspired Darwin's theory of evolution and the transmutation of species after examining the different types of mockingbirds unique to different islands in the Galapagos, and are thus sacred to God. Scout wonders why this evolution jazz isn't taught in school and why they still have to go inside of a church every week if Adam was a chimpanzee and God sleeps in on Sundays. Or how come she can't run around without a shirt in the summer like boys: she gets no answer. Scout, Jem and their friend Dill tell horror stories about the creepy guy who never leaves his house down the street being a deformed psycho axe murderer; later the gang find mysterious trinkets like coins rocks and arrowheads left in a hollowed tree stump that the kids figure must be crows or raccoons.
In the middle of the story, Atticus is asked by a judge to defend the young wandering Confederate hunter Tom Robinson who is accused of either rape or the far more serious unwritten crime of race mixing with local stereotypical redneck farmer Bob Ewell's daughter Mayella, after he did some work for them and took apart a chiffarobe, kindling the flames of passion inside her lying racist heart. Atticus explains man's origins in Africa and takes the gambit of jury nullification at which point prosecutor William Jennings Bryant falls into his trap and himself takes the stand to debate the literal interpretation of the Bible. Atticus asks him if he believes they should arrest King Solomon for loving the Queen of Sheba, or Joseph for marrying the Egyptian former pagan Asenath after he was falsely imprisoned for raping his master Potiphar's wife Zuleika. Finch than seals the deal when he points out Noah's son Ham raped his father but the sentence was only slavery for his African descendants, not death. Everyone in the courtroom was awed and it became an epicenter for a wave of wisdom that spread throughout Alabama, transforming it into the liberal bastion it is today. Bob Ewell slips on Atticus's slick words and confesses to molesting his daughter, and is arrested for obstructing justice for having his daughter lie to the court about the rape and her baby's true father. Tom is set free and allowed to continue on his quest to hunt down the last Confederate war criminals and bring them to justice, as Mayella becomes the only example of a false rape allegation taught in classrooms and Jem's faith in the system is restored. [Citation not needed at all; thank you very much]
It seems like all is set for a happy ending as the curtain falls of the schools Halloween play, until on their way walking home they notice a particularly realistic looking decoration of a man hanging from a tree. As they are distracted in the horror of realizing it's the bruised body of Tom Robinson, a knife wielding Klansmen grabs them, and is about to slit Scouts throat when two of their fingers are blown off by Atticus who quips, "Never bring a knife to a gunfight." Atticus unmasks the bleeding Klansmen as none other than Mayella Ewell and asks her why she did it. She explains she's pregnant and the baby is neither her father's nor Robinson's, but rather the clone of General Robert E. Lee created through his frozen southern blood and seed using an electro portation cloning technique developed by Nikola Tesla. Robinson caught wind of the plan to resurrect the Confederacy and once more wage war against the northern aggressors, with Lee's clones leading the charge, so she needed him out of the picture. Imagine it: a General Lee for the 1920's, the 1930's the 1940's!
As Mayella maniacally laughed, she began bleeding from her side and hacking up blood, causing Atticus to lower his guard, drop his gun and try to assist her. It was a fools folly as she plucked out his left eye and used him as a human shield. Atticus screams at Scout to take the shot, her hands trembling at the thought of missing and hitting her father. She is about to pull the trigger when an arrow shoots into Mayella through the sides of her head and she drops dead. Boo Radley wearing a burlap sack over his hideous deformed face, hands Scout the brain splattered arrowhead as they wait for the police. Finally the sheriff arrives on the scene and covers up the touched-in-the-head shut-in's involvement, blaming his killings on the ghosts of Native Americans, per usual. Boo and Scout walked down the road holding hands before saying goodbye forever as Scout waved goodbye and imagined what life must be like for Boo entombed in a decaying old house, looking out through the window from behind a hockey mask, sorry that she could never repay him for his acts of kindness.
See also[edit]
Film dramas 