On February 19, 2016, the world lost a literary icon.
Harper Lee, the author of the ground-breaking novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” passed away in her sleep early on Friday morning of unknown causes in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. She was 89.
I remember only small amounts of what we did throughout my high school English classes (sorry Mr. Atkinson), but I do remember reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I remember it breaking my heart and making me laugh all at once. I remember being proud inside the skin of Atticus Finch. I remember feeling a sense of encouragement for Boo Radley. I remember the heart and love from Harper Lee coming through her words on the pages.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” is a story about young Scout Finch, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill as well as the rest of the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama getting involved and engrossed in the case of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white girl. Atticus Finch serves as Robinson’s lawyer in this novel based during the great depression, a time when racism was widespread throughout the south. Atticus does his best to defend Robinson despite the public’s bias against this black man.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” was published in 1960. After some back and forth with her editor, Lee was concerned about how the book would be received by the public and stated that she hoped that the attacks from critics would be “short and merciful.” What she received instead was enormous acceptance and praise. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. The story was made into a movie in 1962 and it received three Oscars. In 2007, Lee went to the White House and accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush. In 2010, she was honored with the National Medal of Arts for her contributions to literature from President Barack Obama. “To Kill a Mockingbird” has sold over 40 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages all over the world.
This woman is a symbol of the start of a new book in history. She went somewhere in the '60s that no other author dared to go yet, but, more importantly, Harper Lee walked in, dropped a literary bomb on the world, and walked away for more than 50 years.
This woman didn’t keep writing for the sake of fame. She didn’t want the attention. Harper Lee is notorious for being one of the crankiest authors in the world when it comes to interviews and publicity. She didn’t release a sequel after the hype from “To Kill a Mockingbird” began to fade (although one could argue that the hype still has yet to fade). Until 2015, 55 years after the release of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee didn’t publish a single thing. Then, in 2015, “Go Set a Watchman” was released. While it's still fairly new, we can already tell that this second book won’t have a quarter of the impact that “To Kill a Mockingbird” did, although fans will still enjoy every minute that they spend reading it.
In a day and age when racism was the norm and equality was a joke, Lee exposed a point of view to the world that most people had never even considered. Atticus Finch remains to this day one of, if not the most iconic characters in the history of the story of racial equality in this world. He represented the future and something to work for.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” - Atticus Finch, “To Kill a Mockingbird”
So, here’s to you, Harper Lee. You were one of the world’s greatest literary icons and your words will be shared and studied for countless decades to come. You truly will go down in history as an amazing artist. Your heart and soul will never be forgotten.
