The historian Joseph Crespino explains, "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.

[6] In 1950, Lee moved to New York City, where she worked as a reservation clerk for British Overseas Airways Corporation; there, she began writing a collection of essays and short stories about people in Monroeville.

[28] Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, and whose death is credited as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement, is also considered a model for Tom.

[29] The narrative is very tough, because [Lee] has to both be a kid on the street and aware of the mad dogs and the spooky houses and have this beautiful vision of how justice works and all the creaking mechanisms of the courthouse.

[33] This narrative method allows Lee to tell a "delightfully deceptive" story that mixes the simplicity of childhood observation with adult situations complicated by hidden motivations and unquestioned tradition.

[35] Both Harding LeMay and the novelist and literary critic Granville Hicks expressed doubt that children as sheltered as Scout and Jem could understand the complexities and horrors involved in the trial for Tom Robinson's life.

[36][37] Writing about Lee's style and use of humor in a tragic story, scholar Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin states: "Laughter ... [exposes] the gangrene under the beautiful surface but also by demeaning it; one can hardly ... be controlled by what one is able to laugh at.

[47] Outsiders are also an important element of Southern Gothic texts and Scout and Jem's questions about the hierarchy in the town cause scholars to compare the novel to Catcher in the Rye and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

However, she gave some insight into her themes when, in a rare letter to the editor, she wrote in response to the passionate reaction her book caused:Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners.

This regionalist theme is further reflected in Mayella Ewell's apparent powerlessness to admit her advances toward Tom Robinson, and Scout's definition of "fine folks" being people with good sense who do the best they can with what they have.

[60] In writing about the historical context of the novel's construction, two other literary scholars remark: "To Kill a Mockingbird was written and published amidst the most significant and conflict-ridden social change in the South since the Civil War and Reconstruction.

[68] Literary critic Jean Blackall lists the priorities shared by the two authors: "affirmation of order in society, obedience, courtesy, and respect for the individual without regard for status".

Sharing Scout and Jem's perspective, the reader is allowed to engage in relationships with the conservative antebellum Mrs. Dubose; the lower-class Ewells, and the Cunninghams who are equally poor but behave in vastly different ways; the wealthy but ostracized Mr. Dolphus Raymond; and Calpurnia and other members of the black community.

[72] Charles J. Shields, who wrote the first book-length biography of Harper Lee, offers the reason for the novel's enduring popularity and impact is that "its lessons of human dignity and respect for others remain fundamental and universal".

Johnson notes that even in Scout and Jem's childhood world, compromises and treaties are struck with each other by spitting on one's palm, and laws are discussed by Atticus and his children: is it right that Bob Ewell hunts and traps out of season?

"[83] The novel exposes the loss of innocence so frequently that reviewer R. A. Dave claims that because every character has to face, or even suffer defeat, the book takes on elements of a classical tragedy.

Scout's experience with the Missionary Society is an ironic juxtaposition of women who mock her, gossip, and "reflect a smug, colonialist attitude toward other races" while giving the "appearance of gentility, piety, and morality".

[68] Conversely, when Atticus loses Tom's case, he is last to leave the courtroom, except for his children and the black spectators in the colored balcony, who rise silently as he walks underneath them, to honor his efforts.

The New Yorker declared Lee "a skilled, unpretentious, and totally ingenuous writer",[87] and The Atlantic Monthly's reviewer rated the book "pleasant, undemanding reading", but found the narrative voice—"a six-year-old girl with the prose style of a well-educated adult"—to be implausible.

[35] Time magazine's 1960 review of the book states that it "teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life" and calls Scout Finch "the most appealing child since Carson McCullers' Frankie got left behind at the wedding".

[96] Jane Sullivan in the Sydney Morning Herald agrees, stating that the book "still rouses fresh and horrified indignation" as it examines morality, a topic that has recently become unfashionable.

[98] Literary critic Rosemary Goring in Scotland's The Herald notes the connections between Lee and Jane Austen, stating the book's central theme, that "one's moral convictions are worth fighting for, even at the risk of being reviled" is eloquently discussed.

Although acknowledging that the novel works, Mallon blasts Lee's "wildly unstable" narrative voice for developing a story about a content neighborhood until it begins to impart morals in the courtroom drama, following with his observation that "the book has begun to cherish its own goodness" by the time the case is over.

Mary McDonagh Murphy interviewed celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Rosanne Cash, Tom Brokaw, and Harper's sister Alice Lee, who read the novel and compiled their impressions of it as children and adults into a book titled Scout, Atticus, and Boo.

In one high-profile case outside the U.S., school districts in the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia attempted to have the book removed from standard teaching curricula in the 1990s,[note 3] stating: The terminology in this novel subjects students to humiliating experiences that rob them of their self-respect and the respect of their peers.

[135][136][137] Civil Rights leader Andrew Young comments that part of the book's effectiveness is that it "inspires hope in the midst of chaos and confusion" and by using racial epithets portrays the reality of the times in which it was set.

[139]Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Birmingham campaign, asserts that To Kill a Mockingbird condemns racism instead of racists, and states that every child in the South has moments of racial cognitive dissonance when they are faced with the harsh reality of inequality.

[141] During the years immediately following the novel's publication, Harper Lee enjoyed the attention its popularity garnered her, granting interviews, visiting schools, and attending events honoring the book.

[175][176] According to a National Geographic article, the novel is so revered in Monroeville that people quote lines from it like Scripture; however, Harper Lee herself refused to attend any performances, because "she abhors anything that trades on the book's fame".

Some of the longer descriptive and commentary passages have been left out - "the bits that children tend to skip anyway" as C. J. Lyons says in her review of the graphic novel in the New York Journal of Books[183]), who goes on to say "the heart of Lee's fictional 1933 Maycomb is faithfully recreated via the art and dialogue".