To Kill a Mockingbird goes beyond the simple message "racism is bad" to attempt a more complex examination of how racism works. All forms of racism are not the same: some are born of hate, s...
To Kill a Mockingbird presents a judicial system that doesn’t practice what it preaches. Ideally, a jury of one’s peers dispassionately determines guilt or innocence based on the...
Are kids just the mini-me versions of the adults they will become, or is something substantial lost – or gained – in the transition to adulthood? And how does that process work, anyhow?...
Are morals a matter of community standards or individual conscience? Where do the rights of the community end and the rights of the individual begin? To Kill a Mockingbird examines the confl...
Early in To Kill a Mockingbird, the novel paraphrases Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural address: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." But fear, itself, can be very scary wh...
Being called a girl is about the worst thing possible – or so thinks Scout, the female protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. Girls wear frilly pink dresses, and don’t get to play...
In To Kill a Mockingbird, family is destiny. Within the confines of a small town where the same people have lived for generations, no one can escape…becoming their parents. Either the...
How do you manage compassion for people when they are undeserving? This is a central question in To Kill a Mockingbird. The answer? A little goodness, a little humility, and a lot of imagina...