Whether it was in a book club, English class, or during a spare moment, just about everyone who has read Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has experienced its deep themes. The novel’s themes hold lasting importance for all generations with Lee’s examination of social issues, careful crafting of unique characters, intricate symbolism, and sense of humor.

As we turn each page, readers steal into the gripping adventure of the Finch children, Jean-Louise (Scout), Jem, and their visiting friend, Dill. Narrated by Scout during the “Great Depression” from her deep-southern home of Maycomb Alabama, Jem, Dill, and Scout face the harsh reality of social injustice: racial inequality. And they recognize the importance of sympathy and morality. The boundless three follow in the path of Scout and Jem’s father, Atticus Finch, a character who is a hero
both in literature and law. Historian, J Crespino states that Atticus Finch is ”the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism.” Through their youthful neighborhood expeditions, school encounters, and overseeing their father’s role in law and the building of a moral conscience, Scout, Jem, and Dill walk away with a new understanding on life.

Each reader can find a character in Lee’s novel to admire. At the center of this novel’s numerous and telling themes, Atticus Finch represents a hero of moral influence to Lee’s characters and readers; we are exposed to society’s harsh reality and the power behind sympathy and perspective. Throughout the novel, Atticus exposes the racial discrimination in Maycomb when he chooses to defend an African-American man accused of rape; his devotion to teaching his children that in order to understand there is good and evil in others, they, and ultimately us, must see others from their point of view. Age plays no limit in allowing each reader to connect and absorb these paramount themes, which can better sculpt, enlighten, and strengthen their moral compass.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is a piece of literature that has gone beyond the limits of a pleasurable read and stepped into a progressive age of thinking that will inspire generations of readers to come with a contagious sense of wisdom and moral from its heroes and themes that have shaped our lives since the day of publication.