Truth and Justice in the Novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

Running head: TRUTH AND JUSTICE
TRUTH AND JUSTICE IN THE NOVEL “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”
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TRUTH AND JUSTICE1
Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960) is widely considered to be one of
the classics of the American Literature and was even awarded the Pulitzer Prize1. The novel
is largely autobiographical in nature and highlights the incidents of 1936 in Monroeville,
Alabama which Lee herself faced as a 10-year old age child2. The novel represents the
wrongful conviction of a black man for a murder and the manner in which the narrator’s
father Atticus Finch tries to help the convicted man to get justice.
Merumesenaka3 is of the viewpoint that although the novel has been told from the
perspective of the narrator, who is just a 10-year old girl in the novel, yet at the same time it
is seen that the novel is redolent with some serious themes like truth, justice, rape, social
injustice and others. According to Johnson4, “In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird
is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its main character,
Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism”.
The theme of justice and truth becomes apparent in the stand which Atticus takes for
the black man who is charged with rape and murder and his decision to not give up the case
despite the building social pressure that he and his family had to endure5. This standpoint of
Atticus is being appreciated by the black community who had received nothing but
discrimination and inhumane treatment from the white-skinned people and becomes apparent
from the line “We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right.
1 Porsdam, Helle. "Literary Representation and Social Justice in an Age of Civil Rights: Harper Lee’s To Kill a
Mockingbird." Law and Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2018. 255-272.
2 Johnson, Claudia Durst. Reading Harper Lee: Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman.
ABC-CLIO, 2018.
3 Merumesenaka, S. "New Waves in Language and Literature Inhumanity of Man in Harper Lee’s Novel to Kill
a Mocking Bird." IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 7.3 (2019): 7-
7.
4 Johnson, Claudia Durst. Reading Harper Lee: Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman.
ABC-CLIO, 2018.
5 Baggett, J. Mark. "Tumbling out of the Beautiful Dream: Go Set a Watchman and Harper Lee's
Legacy." Cumb. L. Rev. 47 (2016): 3.