To Kill a Mockingbird

Well...I finally finished it. "Finally" not referring to the fact that it was hard to get through or that I wasn't able to plow through it out of excitement, but because life got busy and responsibilities piled up a little bit and I couldn't make enough time to read. I loved this book. I know I said just last week that The Westing Game is one of my new favorite books and I meant it, but Mockingbird is now my official new favorite. I am in love with this book. The story, the writing, the characters...I laughed out loud and yes, I did cry.

[For those of you who may be like me and have managed to go 20-something years of life without reading this classic...] Scout Finch narrates this book as an eight year old girl, telling the story of one of the most important moments in her childhood. Growing up with a single father, defense attorney Atticus Finch, and her big brother Jem, Scout is a rough-and-tough tomboy who is fully capable of keeping up with Jem's antics as well as having a political debate with her highly educated father. At the center of the plot, however, is a particular case in which Atticus defends a black man charged with rape and consequently puts his family in danger.

I've already said that I love this book and it is now at the very top of my favorites list, so I guess I shouldn't say it again [Oops. I guess I just did, huh?] What I haven't really said is why I love it so much. The witty dialogue and hilarious interchanges between Scout and...well...everyone, are endearing and bond the reader to the characters immediately. To see the world - such a Depression-era, racist, sometimes backwards world - solely through the eyes of a girl wiser and more vocal than her years is a priceless opportunity. Rather than being just another adult caught up in the silly gossip and judgments of this culture, you become acutely aware of the practicality of truth. Example? Okay. The biggest moment of clarity that hit me came about forty pages or so from the end, when Scout goes on a tirade about how her teacher and classmates hate Hitler for discriminating against the Jews just because of their race but they themselves hate black people and see them as second-class citizens just because of their race. Personally, I loathe every concept and inkling of racism or discrimination on the basis of race, and it's been a hot-button topic with me for a long time. But I'm not sure that I ever really connected those dots: how did the American public feel the way they did towards Hitler in the 1940s and yet have the cross burning, murder, and vicious violence of the 1960s? How on earth was that possible? It's so simple, and so indicative of human nature, and yet it had gone completely unnoticed by me until Scout pointed it out. [It should probably be said that the historical timeline seems to be slightly off-set here...Americans were not nearly as aware of Hitler's racial cleansing practices in the 1930s, when this book takes place, as we were during the 1940s, but the point is very well made.] There is so much that I love and appreciate about this book, and the tears did in fact flow in the final pages. I won't tell you what my absolute favorite scene is because it would spoil the entire book if you haven't read it, but I will say that it simultaneously broke my heart and made me sing for joy. If you've read the book, you probably know what scene I'm talking about. If you haven't...well...read it.