To Kill a Mockingbird: A Classic Novel Both Banned and Beloved

    Hello! This is Quintus, and I wanted to tell you today about the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. This novel is a classic, but is also known for being a commonly banned book. People commonly attack the book for its use of the n-word and other slurs. Despite this, though, the novel is quite well respected, and I find it to be wonderful.

    The novel takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression, from the perspective of Scout, a young child who gets into a lot of trouble and is still learning a lot about the world, as one might expect of a child of a young age. She has an older brother named Jem, who begins quite mischievous, but grows to be more mature towards the end of the novel. Finally, Scout's father is Atticus Finch, a middle-aged lawyer who teaches his children many very important life lessons. The story is primarily about Atticus being charged with defending a black man named Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping a married white woman on seemingly unfair grounds. Because Atticus chose to defend the black man, he was despised for it by the citizens of Maycomb, Alabama, who were quite racist. Atticus, however, tells his children that true courage is to do the right thing, even if you might not succeed. I will leave it to you to learn whether or not he does succeed, and how the novel plays out.

    The book is quite clearly anti-racist, as you will see if you choose to read this magnificent classic, which makes me think that those who banned it for its use of the n-word were ignorant or not looking at the bigger lessons of the book. The presence of the n-word actually demonstrates the racism of the people of Maycomb due to their frequent use of the word, and Atticus's anti-racism since he never uses the word. I highly recommend this well-known banned book to you, if you are interested in historical fiction. For very young audiences, though, I would not recommend the book, since it has some heavy topics such as racism and rape. Thank you for reading my blog, and see you again on the next one.

- Quintus Kreiger