1.

There are two of the biggest problems in TKAM:

- The Ewell family is kind of one-dimensionally villainous
- The great hero of the story is a rich white man
2. In the end of the novel, Scout no longer see Boo as terrifying other, she is able to imagine how
events appear from his perspective. She is following Atticus’s famous advice: “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”
3. In fact, there is a long standing literary conspiracy theory that since Harper Lee never wrote
another book, maybe Truman Capote is the real author of TKAM
4. The southern Gothic movement that emerged in the American South, it’s real, although still
fictional. People replace those Gothic Archetypes
5. In the start of TKAM, Boo is a reclusive monster, Jem, Scout and Dill are his potential victims,
and Atticus is a heroic knight. Later, ignorance, racism, and violence prove to be the novel’s real
monsters. Tom and Mayella are their victims and Atticus get to remain the hero
6. In Southern Gothic fiction, decaying building or bodies replace the medieval castle as the dark
settings that heighten a story’s emotional impact
7. In the novel, Lee used Scout’s reflections to expose the performative aspects of gender. The
ways in which gender is the results from what feminist critic Judith Butler describes as the
“repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame
that congeal over time to produce that appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being”
8. Calpurnia and miss Maudie are two women prove t be Scout’s strongest female allies. Calpurnia
supports Scout’s independence by teaching her to write in the kitchen. And miss Maudie
bolsters Scout’s confidence
9. Neither of Cal and Maudie are able to serve on a jury in the won of Maycomb just because one
is a woman, and one is both a woman and black. This is not a subtle social commentary provides
the backbone for Harper Lee’s argument about the dangers of limiting women’s political rights
right
10. The Ewell’s story reminds us again that when we read, we as readers are empowered to make
best choices. A novel really is a collaboration between the author and the reader