To Kill a Blog Post

DISCLAIMER: I missed a passion blog post a few weeks ago, so you guys are getting two for the price of one this week on my passion blog! If you wanna read both, feel free as they are both great movies and I loved watching them. Disclaimer over.

I'm not sure why it's come up so often recently, but I've spent a lot of time lately talking about good books, books that a lot of people read in high school. I was in a cafe in Pittsburgh over break reading a book and some guy just struck up a conversation with me about British literature, so that was pretty cool. My friend from high school and I talked about some books that we'd read in ninth grade, as well, one of them being To Kill a Mockingbird. 

The young actor and actress playing Jem and
Scout do a phenomenal job. (src)

I'm pretty sure we all had to read this book at some point in high school, seeing as it's a great American classic. In case you didn't read it, I'm going to give you a brief rundown. The book is told from the perspective of Jean Louise Finch, a young girl living in the slow-moving town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. The story seems to have two separate plot lines at first.

The first storyline concerns Jean Louise, better known as Scout, and her brother Jem, and their interactions with a strange, alienated man in their neighborhood. His name is Boo Radley, and his past is so shrouded in local lore that he's like the bogeyman to Jem and Scout. However, he begins to leave gifts for them in a tree near their house, and they begin to see that he's not all that scary.

Atticus Finch is a babe to be honest. It helps
that he's not a racist p.o.s. (src)

The second storyline concerns Atticus, Jem and Scout's father, and his defending of an innocent black man, Tom Robinson. Being that this is a small southern town in the Great Depression era, it doesn't really matter that Tom is innocent; if white people say he did something, then he did it, whether or not it happened. 

The storylines come together after Tom is found guilty of the crime and killed when he tries to escape. After this, the man who accused Tom has the nerve to attack Jem and Scout just to piss off Atticus, but they are saved by Boo Radley.

Anyone who’s read the novel knows that it has a very specific tone, sentimental and naïve, as it’s told through Scout’s eyes. I was worried that when I watched the movie, it would fail to capture the essence of the novel; I was worried that it would forego the main character, Scout, to focus on the trial, as the movie was released in the thick of the civil rights movement. But thankfully, the movie stayed true to the novel.

Also thankfully, the movie was greatly enhanced by its score. A playful melody weaves throughout the movie, the sound of childhood innocence; this melody is used skillfully throughout the movie when Boo Radley comes up, suggesting that he’s innocent and safe. It’s one of those classic scores for a classic movie, extremely well done.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT:

Do you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them? Did you like this book when you read it? Did you read it in high school? What was your favorite book in high school?