YMMV / To Kill a Mockingbird

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • There are some subtle hints that Atticus Finch may have actually been a white supremacist. He notably admires Henry W. Grady, an advocate of the "New South" based on rejecting the traditions and economy of the antebellum South while maintaining the social inferiority of blacks. He also compares himself to "Cotton" Tom Heflin, a leading proponent of white supremacy in the South who believed that "God Almighty intended the negro to be the servant of the white man." There are also those (such as legal ethics expert Monroe Freedman) who take issue with his indifference towards Maycomb's pervasive racism, callousness towards the conditions of Blacks in the county, and his Knight in Sour Armor approach to defending Tom Robinson. This is explicit in Go Set a Watchman. The implication (in retrospect) was that he simply wasn't willing to condemn an innocent man to die in spite of it, which did not sit well with readers of Watchman.
  • It is not uncommon to hear Dill's preference for hanging out with Jem interpreted as a childhood crush, and his Childhood Marriage Promise with Scout as his cover. Especially since Dill is said to be based on Harper Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote, who was openly gay.
  • Theories abound about what exactly is wrong with Boo Radley. Is he mentally disabled? Has he been traumatized by his treatment by the hands of his father and brother? (Scout says his father's brutality is the answer.) Is he simply an eccentric with an asocial personality? Scout even thinks he hides from the world because he's upset at all the evil in it.
  • Aunt Alexandra is a prime target for this. There are many who take her attitude towards her brother and his children as a sign that she really doesn't like them one bit. The novel seems to suggest that she does truly care for them in her own way, but how convincingly it does so depends on the reader.
  • Did the men who wrongfully convicted Tom do so simply because he was black? Or did they also do it because they knew Bob Ewell was abusive to his daughter, passed it off as "someone else's problem" for years, and were so afraid of owning up their inaction that they were willing to throw an innocent man under the bus? Given the numerous men involved in the decision, it's not unlikely that it varied from person to person, or that both racism and bystander shame played a role in the decision for some.
  • Is Nathan Radley simply following in his father's abusive and domineering footsteps in keeping Boo locked away, or is he genuinely trying to care for and protect his mentally-ill brother?
  • Did Tom actually die in an escape attempt, or was he lynched and the attempt was just a cover story?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Winston County, the county in Northern Alabama which is said to have seceded from Alabama when Alabama seceded from the Union, is real, and has been even been called the Free State of Winston, though the historical extent of this "secession" is exaggerated (though it's still Truth in Television, as the extent is often exaggerated in Real Life.)
• Awesome Music: Terrific masterpiece composed by Elmer Bernstein.
• Award Snub: The critically acclaimed Broadway production was expectedly nominated for several Tonys, but was shockingly omitted from the Best Play lineup. Many have claimed the snub was due to the productions' controversies regarding a lawsuit from Harper Lee's estate over changes, and producer Scott Rudin taking legal action against community theaters that were performing or planning to perform the previous stage adaptation.
• Can't Un-Hear It: Gregory Peck as Atticus. Even Harper Lee, who based Atticus on her own father, claimed that Gregory Peck became her permanent mental image of Atticus.
• Catharsis Factor: With how much of a horrible person Bob Ewell is, it's very satisfying when Boo finally kills him with his own knife.
• Complete Monster: Robert E. Lee "Bob" Ewell personifies all that was wrong with Dixie in the 1930s. An abusive, neglectful father to his daughter Mayella, Ewell has beaten and is implied to have been sexually abusing her several times. Ewell has Tom Robinson, a disabled Black man, arrested for supposedly raping and beating Mayella, despite the fact that Tom was physically incapable of committing the crime and the fact that Bob caught Mayella making advances on him. Bob tries to kill attorney Atticus Finch's children after a school play as revenge for Finch opposing him, despite Tom having already been sentenced to death.
• Creepy Cute: Boo Radley. He may be a pale shut-in who only goes out at night, but how can you not like his smile?
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Boo Radley is just as iconic as Scout the narrator and Atticus, even though he only has one brief physical appearance after being The Ghost early on.
  • Link Deas, Tom's Benevolent Boss, who voices support for him during the trial and tries to protect Helen from Bob afterward.
  • Newspaper editor BB Underwood (who has 3-5 scenes) is a racist, but he still attracts a lot of interest and discussion due to how he is waiting out of sight to help Atticus fight off the lynch mob before Scout shames them and later condemns the killing of Tom Robinson.
• Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory: According to an apocryphal tale, Harper Lee was once giving a speech on the book at a high school where the students asked a lot of questions about its symbolism. Lee replied that there was none, and that she was merely a starving writer trying to make a buck. Nevertheless, the questions continued, and she got more and more irritated until finally, someone asked why so many characters were named after Confederate generals. She responded, "they were white trash. At the time, all white trash who lived in the South were named after Confederate generals." No more questions were asked; the audience was too busy thinking about whether their classmates were named after Confederate generals.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • The book has been criticized for the use of racial epithets (even by the good guys) and for not developing black characters completely enough, and Atticus for not being as completely accepting of African-Americans as some people would like — but considering that it's set in the 1930s, just the fact that he forbids his children from using the word "nigger" and honestly argues Tom Robinson's case in court even knowing that he can't win (as well as the fact that he actually almost does win) is quite a thing in itself.
  • Some reviewers have taken issue with Jem's comments that, for rape to occur, "you had to kick and holler, you had to be overpowered and stomped on, preferably knocked stone cold". However, Jem was simply stating, in layman's terms, what the law said about rape at the time of the book (and for a few decades afterward).
• Fan Nickname: Tequila Mockingbird - which is how the title is pronounced if said with a Southern Drawl. It has even been defictionalized - a bar in Virginia offers it as a drink.
• Iron Woobie: With the stuff he has to put up with, one could forgive Atticus for just giving up and leaving town. But he never lets all the bad things that happen break him. Even Tom Robinson's conviction, which almost totally shatters his belief in the justice system, doesn't break the man.
• Jerkass Woobie: Mayella Ewell. While she's a very unpleasant young woman who has falsely accused an innocent man of assault, it's difficult not to pity her. She lost her mother at a young age, lives in poverty and squalor, struggles to raise her siblings with no help, has no friends, endures physical abuse from her father, and it's strongly implied that she endures sexual abuse from her father as well. She came on to Tom because she was lonely and he was the only person who had shown her kindness, and then was forced to falsely accuse Tom out of fear of her father. Also, being treated with respect was so alien to her that she was convinced that Atticus was mocking her when he spoke courteously to her in court.
  • Notably, the play says pretty explicitly that the moment Tom said he felt sorry for her, he had more or less signed his death sentence. A black man could not feel sorry for a white woman, no matter her circumstances.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Scout's iconic ham costume.
  • Scout believing that Mrs. Maudie is the one leaving the gifts in the tree.
  • Jem leaving his pants on the fence has caused quite a few memes on Tumblr.
  • An image of Atticus and Tom sitting in the court room has often been used online to criticize people who uncritically believe in allegations, especially of a sexual nature. An example.
  • Page 174^ExplanationIt's said online that this is the first page in the book to contain an instance of the N-word, though this is incorrect as it's actually used much earlier. Because the book is commonly used in white-majority schools, the page is a frequent subject of Cringe Comedy jokes, highlighting both the awkwardness of white students and teachers having to say a racial slur out loud and the implications of someone reading the offending page without hesitation and/or in an overly-eager manner.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • If Bob didn't cross it by beating and possibly raping his own daughter and falsely accusing an innocent man of it, he definitely crossed it by trying to murder two children just because their father made him look foolish in court.
  • The jury on Tom's case, sans Mr. Cunningham, the only dissenting voice who was eventually pressured into line with the rest, crosses it by finding Tom guilty, which results in Tom being given the death penalty. Even though they knew that it was impossible for Tom to be guilty, they still condemn him to die just because they refuse to admit that a black man's word could ever triumph over a white man's.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Bob Ewell trying to kill little children.
  • To Afro-Americans in that place and time, the framing and trial of Tom Robinson. Brock Peters' performance brings this starkly to light even to modern audiences who didn't live through that era.
• Older Than They Think: Intruder in the Dust, a 1948 William Faulkner novel with a 1949 film adaptation, is another story told from the perspective of a child who is related to a white Crusading Lawyer (albeit far less crusading than Atticus, at least in that particular Faulkner book) defending an Ideal Hero black man who has been wrongfully accused of a crime against the only member of an unpopular backwoods family to try and make something of themselves. Furthermore, both stories have the real culprit be another member of that family and feature a lynch mob that is stopped through unconventional Shaming the Mob methods.
• Once Original, Now Common: A Young Adult Coming of Age Story about a Tomboy growing up in a Quirky Town in the Deep South during the Depression, and her heroic dad who braves communal scorn to help the oppressed black man. Sounds like a Cliché Storm from The '90s airport novel, but was groundbreaking when first published in 1960.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Boo Radley, as played by Robert Duvall, in his first film appearance ever. He is onscreen for just a moment, and doesn't utter a single word the entire time, but manages to say everything he needed to only using his eyes.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity integrationist Dolphus Raymond in the book.
  • In the film, Mayella's actress does a great job with a downcast, halting performance that reveals the character's internal conflict.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The Broadway production notably ran into a lawsuit from the estate of Harper Lee and producer Scott Rudin later attempted legal action against community theaters attempting to put on productions of the previous stage adaptation. The Lee estate lawsuit was eventually settled, and after backlash, Rudin dropped his own suits and allowed these companies to use the new Aaron Sorkin script for free.
• Present-Day Past: One example in the film - the box of gifts from Boo to Scout and Jem include a penny with a 1960 date stamped on it, even though the events take place in the early 1930s. Of course, it's possibly intentional to indicate that Scout in the present day could have just added a modern penny to the box to "update" the souvenirs.
• Retroactive Recognition: Robert Duvall (in his first feature film role) as Boo Radley.
• Squick: The lines about how long ago Mayella's mother died, and how no one in town is quite sure how many Ewell children there are, could even be taken to imply that the youngest ones are hers.
• Tough Act to Follow: Lee avoided this trope by never publishing another book, until 2015. She was often accused of not writing this one (especially since her "childhood friend" was a bestselling author in his own right). People who actually knew Truman Capote dismiss this tinfoil hatting by pointing out he would never have not taken credit for it, especially with how well-received it was - just about any list of "Greatest American Novels" will include it somewhere.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Examined. The teacher Miss Caroline isn't impressed that Scout learned reading at a young age because it goes against the school system. Nowadays she would be skipped ahead a few grades, provided she was in a decent school district.
  • Tom Robinson implies that Mayella's father sexually abused her in less than a sentence — one left out of the film^note "She says what her pa do to her don't count.", and it is never brought up again, even though Lee wrote the book in the 1960s. This is because it was considered scientific fact that parental incest was imaginary on the part of the child, up until about the '70s. Modern readers, especially high schoolers, are often shocked that this aspect wasn't given greater weight.
  • As Go Set a Watchman demonstrated to readers everywhere, Atticus' liberal, laissez-faire attitude towards Maycomb's racist society does not age well. The seeming "change" in his character was pretty much just him acting the same way he did in Mockingbird, just during the Civil Rights era.
  • At the time of the story, Negro was a polite way to address blacks, while Nigger was consistently treated as a negative term. Many today (even those aware of this fact) at best see the former as a slightly less insulting version of the latter, and at worst see very little distinction between those two words.
  • Bob Ewell makes death threats against Atticus for the crime of making him look like a fool in court. Atticus brushes it off despite Scout correctly intuiting the man does not bluff, but these days the police would at least get involved for a restraining order.
• Values Resonance:
  • Many of the book's messages and morals are resonant even in today's world. Discrimination against minorities in the US is still an ongoing debate, with the topic being given a larger degree of focus nowadays due to the rise of social media platforms.
  • While not a focal point of the story, this book does show how damaging false rape accusations really are, especially when targeted towards minorities. With the rise of social media, the legal issues of false rape cases have begun to be more of an issue, especially when trying to help those who actually did suffer from it.
  • Scout's negative reaction towards Miss Caroline is surprisingly relevant today. While one would like to think that this is an example of wrong-headed thinking long since put aside, in fact it is still sadly common for children in the American school system to be reprimanded or even punished for being more advanced than the system dictates. Any standardised system is going to let outliers down, and there will always be teachers who act according to the letter rather than the spirit of the education guidelines.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The book is a funny case in that if you're a little kid, you probably won't get some of the more family-unfriendly lines, in a sort of twisted cousin of Parental Bonus. It's certainly one hell of a delayed realization, however, to understand the line, "She said she'd never kissed a man before, and she might as well kiss a n***r. She said what her pa do to her don't count."
  • They have this one in the UK (or did at least) as a book study for kids at school somewhere around 12-16. As a powerful book about rape, incest, bigotry, racism, slavery, and human rights, it's one of those books people like to try to get banned because it has the word 'n***r' in it.
  • The UK still has To Kill a Mockingbird as a book study in upper high school (KS4/GCSEs) so it's age 14-16.
  • It's also commonly assigned as required reading in the US for junior high/high school students (about 12-18).
• The Woobie:
  • Tom Robinson. He's a nice quiet family man who minded his own business, and occasionally helped Mayella. Nonetheless, Bob Ewell decides to get him killed. What makes Tom's fate even more tragic is that Atticus didn't screw up his case in the least. It's made very clear that Tom is innocent, yet he's voted guilty anyway.
  • Also, Tom's wife. She does her best to make ends meet for her children after her husband is framed and killed, only to be endlessly harassed by Bob Ewell and considered to be living in "sin and squalor" by the local white women.
  • Boo Radley. He was turned into a shut-in prisoner in his own home by his abusive father Nathan Radley, allegedly for running around with some trouble-maker kids in the neighborhood when he was a child. It's unclear whether Boo suffered some some mental handicap such as autism, or whether his reclusive behavior was the result of being turned into a shut-in. Either way, he lived a rather wretched life.
  • Jem qualifies as well. As a kid going through puberty, he already has a lot of difficulties going on, and throughout the book his struggles keep piling up with seeing the reality and how horrifying it truly is and having him and his sister slowly grow apart. May be a Jerkass Woobie given how him growing apart from Scout is somewhat his own fault.
• Woolseyism: The Italian title of the book and movie is 'Il Buio Oltre La Siepe', 'The Darkness Beyond The Hedge', which is a pretty poetic description of the main theme of both works; not just racism, but also fear of the unknown, whatever is in that darkness that is just beyond the hedge that borders the world we do know, like Boo Radley.

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