Part of The Book Challenge

The Book Challenge number: 1

Start date: 1st January 2020

End date: 9th February 2020

Time taken to read: 40 days

Thoughts:

I really struggled to get into this book. I think I did not bond well with the protagonist. At first I thought Jean Louise or Scout as she is known as a teenage male to part way through the book realise she was a four year old girl did throw me a little.

I also found the book a little boring. I knew Atticus Finch was a character that is celebrated for his challenging prejudice, championing equal rights and morality…but I did not really know the story prior to reading it. I found it very slow to get to the court case and to begin to show the story that made Atticus to be a strong, moral character. I found those chapters very readable and I did not put it down. Yet then it faded again, but it carried you on willing to find Tom’s justice…to fizzle out again. Then as the last few chapters unfold you, again, get the build up on the walk back home from school, the tension building for the story to almost drop flat, as if in the middle of it. The book that relied so much on the gossip and reactions of the town, falling silent on the last dramatic evening of the book.

Not really knowing all that much about the American south and the culture of slave-owners and the lingering legacy of that in the south. I did enjoy reading about small town America and how society was structured and reading about some of the views. As someone who has studied history and in particular the Holocaust and understanding concepts of Race and Ethnicity. I liked the drawing a criticism of how it was seen as madness for Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany to terrorise Jews, persecute and arrest them and eventually find ‘the final solution for the Jewish question’ through extermination. Yet, similarly naively think that those in Maycomb were more civil, despite treating their fellow Americans, fellow human beings, as second class (or even fourth class citizens as the book implied) simply because of the colour of their skin.

Having read the book I champion the court case and the challenging an aspect of prejudice and injustice in society. I also praise the story for writing a fictionalised account that was inspired by real events. I just feel there was not enough of it in the book. I am glad to have read about Atticus Finch, but I can’t help but think I would have liked to have read about Amasa Coleman Lee (Harper Lee’s lawyer father) and some of his court cases more.