to kill a mocking bird essay

101 To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Titles & Examples

If you struggle to find “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay topics on prejudice, race, the characters’ courage, or any other issue, look no further. Our team has prepared a list of titles and essay writing tips for this book.

🏆 Best To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Topics & Examples

📌 most interesting to kill a mockingbird essay titles, 👍 good to kill a mockingbird research topics, ❓ to kill a mockingbird essay questions.

Before we will talk about the do’s and don’ts in essay writing, let’s clarify the types of essay.

When working on “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay thesis, you can focus on the facts of the book or concentrate on your attitude towards its key issues and characters. According to your approach, we can divide essays into two main areas:

• Objective essay: you set out your personal thoughts on a chosen issue and provide supporting arguments and evidence;
• Subjective essay: you express your point of view on a specific topic without claiming the truth and strengthening it with facts.

For example, when you choose a “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay topics on goodness, you will state that Atticus is a kind and fearless. No doubt that this character has a positive role.

On the other hand, when you describe Mayella, you will have to choose: will you condemn her or express pity.

As for the essay content, it can be divided into many subcategories:

• Philosophical essay
• Critical essay
• Literary analysis
• Historical essay, etc.

There are also a few key literary types:

• Feature article, etc.

Do’s & Don’ts When Writing To Kill a Mockingbird Essays

Now, it’s time to talk about what you should write and what to avoid in your paper. First of all, you have to remember that all “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay titles should reveal the essence of the issue.

Recommendations for essay writing:

• Do mark your essay subject at the beginning of the text. “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay hooks will help you to catch the reader’s attention. Don’t forget to emphasize the central issue in the conclusion.
• Do support the style of presentation by your emotions, vision, and opinion. Use the “question-answer” in paragraphs. Make the transitions between paragraphs harmonious and smooth.
• Do use quotes, historical facts, and observations to argue the thesis statement, solve the main issue, and describe the key subject of the paper.
• Do stick to the central thesis of your essay. Avoid deepen into philosophical reflections — tell about concrete facts and examples. Here’s an example: don’t include the facts from the author’s biography if you focus on the events of the book and factors that affect discrimination.
• Do proofread the paper. Read carefully your essay several times and think if your readers will understand your expressions.
• Do not use specific terminology in “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay. For example, when you write about discrimination, you don’t necessarily have to provide its dictionary definition or use complex law, historical and psychological literature, and samples. Just your own language. However, it doesn’t mean that your opinion should seem ungrounded.
• Do add your emotions to the paper. Let your readers feel that you believe in your ideas when defending the essay thesis.
• Don’t choose the header before you write an essay. First, you should write an essay, and only then compile the title of your paper.

Well, now you know about the essay types, what to do, and what to avoid in your essay. Of course, you may ask: “What to write in my own essay?”

The key to success is to start. Check “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay examples on our website to get inspiration. Even the topic seems to you too complicated, start your research, and then you will be able to express new and original thoughts.

• Slavery in To Kill a Mockingbird Novel The introduction of Tom by the author is a plot device to represent the plight of the slaves in the state.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird”: Book and Movie Differences It is important to note that the film, To Kill a Mockingbird entails most of the aspects depicted in the novel.
• To Kill a Mockingbird Main Themes The main themes of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird cover both adult and children’s concerns, including the dignity of human life, the importance of truth, the rights of people to be different, the need […]
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) by Robert Mulligan This movie presented a timely reflection of the extent of deep racial problems and social injustices existing in the southern part of the US in the early 60s.
• Novel Appreciation: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The contemporary discussion of this novel is often tied to the question of racism; nevertheless, I am convinced that this book can be of great interest to modern readers, and I would like to discuss […]
• Analysis of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Although the innocent black man is killed while attempting to break out of prison when he might have gone free had the case proceeded to a higher court, Atticus and the town’s sheriff conjure a […]
• Themes in “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, in its imperfection, is a testament to the march of progress in social justice and racial equality.
• Moral Principles in Harper Lee’s Novel To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee explores a great number of themes in the first chapters of the novel, for example, integrity of a person and his/her ability contradict the norms, adopted in the community.
• To Kill a Mockingbird The author, in the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird presents a deeper understanding in relation to events occurring in her novel. To enhance understanding of the novel, the author has widely embraced symbolism in […]
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• The Title of Lee’s “How to Kill a Mockingbird” Book The novel’s core topic is the disappearance of innocence and the influence of bias on the lives of the novel’s characters.
• Empathy and Racism in Stockett’s The Help and Li’s To Kill a Mockingbird To start with, the first approach to racism and promoting empathy is to confront prevalent discrimination and racism, which was often shown in The Help. Another solution to racism and the possibility of promoting empathy […]
• Systemic Racism in Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” & Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys” Racism in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is pronounced and presented as the natural habitat of the town of Maycomb.
• Nelle Harper Lee and Her Reflection in “To Kill a Mockingbird” The author perfectly reflects her life in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird as her father played an essential role in creating the story.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” Drama Film The plot proves to be logical and consistent throughout the movie, motivating the audience to watch till the end of the film.
• Understanding Other Perspective: To Kill a Mockingbird The literature portrays the actual happenings in the society in an educative and corrective manner that is acceptable to both sides of the victim and perpetrator of injustices.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird”: The Novel by Harper Lee Scout does not realize the severity of many of the events of the book as they are taking place, and as such she is an innocent.
• American History in “To Kill a Mockingbird” Book & Film Racial attitudes and the dominance of white men over the black ones in the USA are the central ideas of the movie and the novel.
• Racist Trial in the Novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee For the purpose, evaluation would be made in the context of utilization of events, time and culture of the book and compare it to today’s society, culture and racial attitudes.
• Racial Prejudice in Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” Paul Lawrence Dunbar in his poem, “Sympathy” has vividly portrayed the pangs of a caged bird and likens it to the collective pain that colored people have felt like victims of racial prejudices.”And a pain […]
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” Novel by Harper Lee It is one of the main characteristics of the mockingbird includes its innocence and imitation of the songs of other birds in a loud voice.
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee In consequence, the book became a model source of reading that inspired people to further take on the issues of race in the USA and throughout the world.
• American Novel: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee It is also worth to mention that the novel is indeed relevant to its readership because it mirrors the nature of society affected by racism and inequality. Through the act of inclusiveness, I am in […]
• What It Takes to Kill a Mockingbird: In Search for the Differences Between the Novel and a Movie The characters both in the novel and in the movie were often pushed to the breaking point; however, one of such moments described in the book was left out of the movie.
• The Problem of Racism and Injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee In the novel, Harper Lee demonstrates her vision of the question of the social inequality with references to the problem of racism in the society based on prejudice and absence of actual principles of tolerance […]
• Social Issues in the “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee The phrase ‘to kill a mocking bird’ stands out as a metaphor in the book To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
• To Kill a Mockingbird: Movie Analysis Speaking of the movements which convey the essence of the film without any speech “intrusion”, it would be a good idea to drive the example of Boo Radley standing in the darker corner of the […]
• “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the Techniques Used: Characterisation, Structure, Point of View, and Language
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• The Significance of the Title of “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
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Everything You Need to Know About Analysing ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ for English | Summary, Context, Themes & Characters

One of the classics of American literature, ‘ To Kill a Mockingbird’ has been assigned to you for your English class and you need to conduct an essay analysis. Whether you’re looking for a summary of the themes in To Kill a Mockingbird or a quick refresher of the key characters or context, we’ve got you! 

You’ll also be able to download a copy of our analysed textual examples, as well as a sample paragraph so you can ace your tasks.

Let’s take a look together! 

To Kill a Mockingbird Summary Key Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird Symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird Context Themes Explored in To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird

Summary of To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that centres around the Finch family and is told through the perspective of Jean (nicknamed Scout), within the town of Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus, Jean’s father, is a prominent lawyer and the family lives relatively comfortably despite the impacts of the Great Depression. 

Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons

Scout, her brother Jem and their friend Dill spend the summer together where Dill eventually becomes fascinated by the Radley’s house where Boo Radley, a mysterious and ghostly figure that is the topic of much speculation and stories for the children of Maycomb .

Scout and Jem find gifts in the knothole of a tree on the Radley property, but Nathan Radley chases the children off the property and eventually seals up the knothole. When a fire breaks out, Jem tells Atticus that Boo is caused it. 

Access the To Kill a Mockingbird Downloadable Sample Paragraph and Examples of Analysis

The climax of the novel arrives when Atticus agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a Black man who has been accused of raping a white woman. As a result, Scout and Jem get bullied by other children in their conservative, racist town.

At a pivotal moment, Mrs Dubose, the neighbour of the Finch family, harasses the children and Jem lashes out by destroying her garden.

As punishment, Atticus tells Jem to read to Mrs Dubose every day, explaining to the children that she is addicted to morphine and trying to overcome her addiction. Thus, despite the children’s initial indignation, Atticus teaches them an important lesson in empathy and perspective. 

When Tom Robinson’s trial begins, he is held in the local courthouse where a group of people gather planning to lynch him. Atticus confronts the group the night before the trial, where Jem and Scout sneak out of the house to join him.

Recognising one of the men, Scout gently asks him how his son is doing, unknowingly shaming him and causing the group the disperse. 

At the trial, the siblings choose to sit with the town’s Black citizens as Atticus presents clear evidence that Mayella and Bob Ewell are lying about the rape.

Atticus demonstrates that the injuries on Mayella’s face are wounds from Bob when he found her with Tom. However, despite the convincing evidence indicating Tom’s innocence, the all-white jury convicts him. 

Tom is killed later on when he tries to escape prison. Additionally, despite his success at the trial, Bob Ewell feels that he has been made a fool and takes revenge.

First, he harasses Tom’s widow before finally attacking Jem and Scout as they walk home from a party. However, the children are saved by Boo Radley who fatally stabs Ewell during the struggle.

Boo carries an injured Jem home and Atticus insists that Ewell tripped over a tree root and fell on his knife to protect Boo.  The novel ends with Scout walking Boo home and reflecting on the events of the novel and the complexities of humanity. 

Key Characters in To Kill a Mockingbird

Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch is the main character and we first met her when she is 6 years old, although it is narrated by an older Scout who is reflecting and looking back on her life. Through her, we learn about the town, her family and what it was like to live in the early 1930s during the Great Depression and the racial tensions that existed during that time.  

Atticus Finch Atticus Finch is a single father in To Kill a Mockingbird who is appointed as the defence lawyer for a Black man who is accused of raping a White woman. Throughout the novel, Atticus teaches the children about empathy and how to view situations from different people’s perspectives instead of judging them harshly. 

Jem Finch Jem Finch is Scout’s older brother who looks up to their father a lot. As an older brother, Jem accompanies Scout for a lot of her adventures and it is evident that the two are close. Being older, we watch Jem mature and often understand issues that Scout still does not. 

Tom Robinson Tom Robinson is the Black man who Atticus defends during the rape trial. During the trial, there is compelling evidence that Tom is innocent and that the Ewells falsely accused him of rape. Despite this, Tom Robinson is found guilty due to the jury’s racial prejudice. 

Boo Radley Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley is the Finch’s mysterious neighbour which the children in the town often speculate and make up scary stories about him. While he was a teenager, Boo was part of a gang of boys who caused trouble in Maycomb by drinking and gambling. As a result of this, he was locked in his home for many years and not allowed out. However, he has a soft spot for the children, leaving them gifts in the knothole of a tree and saving Jem when he is attacked by Bob Ewell. 

Symbols in To Kill a Mockingbird

Mockingbird In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the symbolic significance of the mockingbird resonates deeply. It represents innocence and goodness . Atticus Finch’s advice to his children, Scout and Jem, to never harm a mockingbird metaphorically extends beyond the bird itself. The innocent characters like Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are likened to mockingbirds, as they bring no harm but are subjected to cruelty and injustice due to societal prejudices .

The Radley Place The ominous Radley house and its reclusive occupants, particularly Boo Radley, symbolise the fear of the unknown . The town’s gossip and myths surrounding the Radleys serve as a reflection of the community’s prejudiced attitudes. Boo Radley, initially feared and misunderstood, eventually becomes a symbol of compassion and kindness, challenging the town’s preconceived notions.

These symbols intricately weave into the narrative, adding layers of depth to the novel’s themes of innocence, prejudice, empathy, and the complexities of morality and human behavior.

To Kill a Mockingbird is set in Alabama during the 1930s, allowing Harper Lee to explore the impact of racism and the Great Depression on people. While slavery had been abolished in 1890, most White Americans continued to hold racial prejudices against them.

Segregation laws meant that Black people were separated from White people. This is reflected in Maycomb where they live in a separate part of town and even sit in a separate area during Tom Robinson’s trial. 

Image sourced from Britannica

Additionally, Lee demonstrates the racism in America during this time through the town’s response to Atticus agreeing to defend Tom and his subsequent trial. From the children being harassed, the attempted lynching of Tom and finally being found guilty by the jury despite overwhelming proof of his innocence, the novel demonstrates how racism affected Black people in all aspects of their lives during this time. 

While the novel was set in the 1930s, Lee wrote it during the 1960s when the Civil Rights Movement was happening . The legal system continued to be discriminatory towards Black people, thus many of the racial themes that Lee explores in the novel would easily be recognisable to the public when the book was published.

The continued relevance of To Kill a Mockingbird during the 21st century can still be seen in the Black Lives Matter movement in America and ongoing racial injustices. 

Image sourced from Minnesota Historical Society

Themes Explored in To Kill a Mockingbird

As you read through To Kill a Mockingbird, you will encounter themes such as:

• Empathy and courage
• Loss of innocence 

The Complexities of Humanity

To Kill a Mockingbird explores the complexities of humanity and how both good and evil can exist at the same time within people. Told through the perspective of Scout between the ages of 6-9, readers are offered an opportunity to watch Scout mature while also learning alongside her. 

Social Prejudice

Themes of social prejudice are also strong within the novel, featuring various social outcasts from Mrs Dubose who is a morphine addict, Boo Radley and the Black citizens of Maycomb.

Through these characters, Lee is able to explore the different prejudices society often holds and encourages us to be empathetic to people we may think of as unpleasant or weird due to their differences or behaviours. Instead, we are encouraged to see a different point of view and “climb into his skin and walk around in it”. 

The Enduring Relevance of the Text

While To Kill a Mockingbird was set in the 1930s and written in the 1960s, many of the themes continue to remain relevant more than 50 years later. It is likely that your English classes will ask you to consider why we continue to study this book and what it teaches us about social prejudices.

While segregation may be a thing of the past, themes like racism’s impact on the justice system can still be seen in movements like Black Lives Matter. Additionally, while the book deals with racism specifically, social prejudices like how we interact with people from different backgrounds, those with a disability or LGBTQ+ people can also be examined through this book. 

Events to Keep in Mind

While Tom Robinson’s case is the climax of the novel, there are various characters and events that you should keep a lookout for as well!

From the children going to the Black church, their interactions with Mrs Dubose and Boo Radley — there are various events where the children build empathy and challenge their own opinions of other citizens in the town , providing an opportunity for the readers to learn alongside them too. 

How to Analyse To Kill a Mockingbird in 3 Steps

Usually, when students try to write their essay for To Kill a Mockingbird, or any other text, they’ll try to work on their thesis first when responding to an essay question — however, we recommend starting with your analysis!

Doing this will allow you to expand your knowledge of the text before thoroughly answering anything about it. Once you’ve analysed your text, then you can draw ideas from it and properly build your thesis.

We’re going to walk you through writing up an essay analysis for To Kill a Mockingbird in three simple steps!

Step 1: Choose your example

When picking an example ensure that you are able to identify a technique in the text.

Here, we have chosen to look at Atticus’s statement to the Court and jury at Tom Robinson’s trial:

“We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe – some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others… But there is one way in this country in which all men have been created equal… That institution, gentlemen, is a court.”

This is quite a long quote from To Kill a Mockingbird, so remember when you’re actually writing up your analysis for your essay, you don’t actually need to include the complete quote — just excerpts.

We’ve got a list of 50 quotes that you should check out from To Kill a Mockingbird!

Step 2: Identify your technique(s)

Ensure that the technique you choose for your quote supports your analysis or helps you to build your argument.  

To enhance your response, you want to discuss techniques that have a lot more depth — you should keep an eye out for any literary techniques such as metaphors, similes and motifs!

For the above quote, there is repetition, cumulative listing, inclusive language and allusion. 

Step 3: Write the analysis

When writing the analysis, focus on the effect of the technique and how it supports your argument. In this case, we are going to analyse how the quote addresses the theme of racial prejudices. 

The opening of “we know all men are not created equal” subverts the American declaration of independence , as Atticus utilises cumulative listing to demonstrate all the ways in which men and women are not equal.

However, he also reminds the jury during this trial that the law is a “way in this country in which all men have been created equal”, alluding to the American Declaration of Independence and the core values of the nation . Analysis for this quote may look like: 

Atticus, aware that the jury is likely to find Tom Robinson guilty despite strong evidence of his innocence due to the racial prejudices the White jury is likely to hold tries to challenge this t hrough the inclusive language of in “we know all men are not created equal”, Atticus presents the jury and the defence as being on the same side. Furthermore, the allusion to the core American values when he states “in this country there is one way all men have been created equal”, creates an appeal to both the jury’s sense of justice and core American values. 

Need to write a Feature Article on ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’? Look no further than this incredible in-depth guide to help you ace your writing!

Need some help analysing other texts?

Check out other texts we’ve created guides for below:

• All the Light We Cannot See
• Lord of the Flies
• The Meursault Investigation
• In Cold Blood
• Pride and Prejudice
• Jasper Jones
• Romeo and Juliet

Read also: how to write a feature article for English ! 

Are you looking for some extra help with your essay analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird?

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We can help you master your essay analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird by taking you through the summary, key characters and themes. We’ll also help you ace your upcoming English assessments with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or online!

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Tiffany Fong is currently completing a double degree in Media and Communications with Law at Macquarie University. She currently contributes to the university zine, Grapeshot where she enjoys writing feature articles, commentary on current affairs or whatever weird interest that has taken over her mind during that month. During her spare time, Tiffany enjoys reading, writing, taking care of her plants or cuddling with her two dogs. 

• Topics: ✏️ English , ✍️ Learn

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Understanding the Concept and Implications of Recidivism

This essay about recidivism explores its impact on the criminal justice system and society. It examines how individual, social, economic, and systemic factors contribute to the tendency of ex-offenders to reoffend. The text highlights the need for effective rehabilitation, reintegration strategies, and policy reforms to reduce crime rates and support successful reintegration of offenders into society.

How it works

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These classic ’60s books shout from the shelves to be read again

Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Harper Lee and others asked provocative, brave questions about many of the same urgent issues we face today.

The National Book Awards will celebrate its 75th anniversary at this year’s ceremony, on Nov. 20. To mark the occasion, The Washington Post has collaborated with the administrator and presenter of the awards, the National Book Foundation, to commission a series of essays by National Book Award-honored authors who will consider (and reconsider), decade by decade, the books that were recognized and those that were overlooked; the preoccupations of authors, readers and the publishing industry through time; the power and subjectivity of judges and of awards; and the lasting importance of books to our culture, from the 1950s to the present day. In this essay, Prudence Peiffer — longlisted for the nonfiction award in 2023 for “ The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever ” — looks back at the 1960s.

“Art hurts. Art urges voyages–/ and it is easier to stay at home,/ the nice beer ready.”

This is poet Gwendolyn Brooks at her best, stinging sentiment followed by a swig of damning, ordinary detail from the fridge. We’ve worked hard for a drink that shuts out the world. The lines are taken from her collection “In the Mecca,” a National Book Award finalist in 1969. An adjacent thought from another poet, Elizabeth Bishop, in “Questions of Travel” (1966 finalist): “Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?”

Writing is both the staying at home and the difficult voyage, which makes it particularly useful for time travel. And from mushrooms to the moon, no decade in the United States is more known for its mind-expanding trips than the 1960s. Despite that era’s iconic male voices (you may have read a few), its women writers have moved me most in influencing my work: Bishop, Brooks, Hannah Arendt, Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor, Susan Sontag — and names that, sadly, don’t ring as loudly today, like Alice Kimball Smith.

With intimate assurance and often radical insight, these authors took up a looming anxiety of the postwar and Cold War era: What does community mean? Another way of asking this is: Where does home end and “elsewhere” begin, and how does that define one’s responsibilities? These were provocative, even brave, questions to pose as a woman in 1960s America; it makes these books that much more relevant and alive to us lucky enough to read them today.

In her environmental cri de coeur “Silent Spring” (1963 finalist), Carson illustrated the interconnectivity of life via unforgettable images, like an owl in convulsions after eating a shrew that in turn ate earthworms that in turn ate decomposed leaves that had fallen from a tree sprayed with chemicals for Dutch elm disease.“Most of us walk unseeing through the world, unaware alike of its beauties, its wonders, and the strange and sometimes terrible intensity of the lives that are being lived about us,” Carson wrote. She was describing how, venturing out into the garden at night with a flashlight, we’d be amazed and horrified at the vicious balance of nature. But that sentence could just as easily have come from Jacobs’s “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1962 finalist), in which Jacobs argued that we need to understand and celebrate urban complexity, and make sure that complexity is not demolished in the name of profits for the few. A city needs to be for everybody, but also: Everybody makes a city great.

I’m struck by how these classics from Carson and Jacobs can be read in succession as pendant volumes of community activism. In that era of fervent capitalist nation-building, they were daring warnings of democracy’s fragility, the importance of living with and trusting strangers. Carson’s most radical move was calling out a different kind of life cycle, one in which scientists’ research was funded by the very industry their findings were supposed to regulate.

It wasn’t just nonfiction writers who captured the “strange and sometimes terrible intensity” of the lives around us. That’s also reflected with cold brilliance in O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (1966 finalist), her blunt portrait of the rural South. (Bishop almost made a pilgrimage to see O’Connor in Milledgeville, Ga., where the writer famously lived on a farm with her peacocks, but timing thwarted the visit; instead, Bishop sent her a cross in a bottle.) Like so many of the writers in this remarkable decade, O’Connor showed people in a rapidly changing landscape where a community is under threat. She knew a good title and she always stuck the landing, often with a violent death that shattered a character’s self-righteousness. I’ve never flinched so much while reading. She spared no one, including herself, if unintentionally: We can feel O’Connor working through her questions about the fallibility of her White, Catholic views, which maintained their own ingrained bigotry. What does it mean to be a good Christian when everyone’s life feels preordained? Published just a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the ban on segregation, “Everything That Rises” is a reminder of racism’s rooted legacy in daily thinking — our most intimate language — especially in characters who are trying to perform a kind of morality. Scenes like the one on the bus in the title story, or in the doctor’s waiting room in “Revelation,” are primers for the barbarous truth that can hide in idle conversation.

O’Connor famously called Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1961 finalist) a children’s book. (It’s true that it has maintained its central place in the national consciousness through its pervasiveness on high school reading lists, and some of its most powerful scenes take place in the schoolyard.) Though its tone could not be more different than “Everything That Rises,” it’s also a work of fiction teeming with neighborhood life in the still-segregated South and concerned with our moral responsibilities to the community around us. The judgment in Lee’s book is tied more to the law and its democratic processes than to the Bible, but Lee gives Atticus Finch a radically empathetic vision of religious intensity.

Defining and modeling empathy around community had different stakes for different writers. “In the Mecca” was a fulcrum for Brooks: It was her final book with a major trade publisher before she chose to work only with smaller, Black-run presses — a powerful statement coming from a Pulitzer Prize winner who had just been appointed poet laureate of Illinois. Like Jacobs’s book, “In the Mecca” is about the death of American cities (here, Chicago) through neglect, racism and poor planning, but also about the life in them, through their people and art.

Arendt’s “Men in Dark Times” (1969 finalist) ties community to responsibility, or our knowing turn away from it: “More and more people in the countries of the Western world, which since the decline of the ancient world has regarded freedom from politics as one of the basic freedoms, make use of this freedom and have retreated from the world and their obligations within it,” she wrote. In arguing for the necessity of a community of thinkers in the worst of times, Arendt read across media and history, a dexterity of thinking shared by Sontag, who embraced the Doors and Dostoevsky. Both Arendt and Sontag describe what is happening in plain sight and language, the “luminousness of the thing in itself,” as Sontag describes it, “of things being what they are.” Sontag identified the bliss in aesthetics; she claimed to see a film a day during this decade. Her essay collection “Against Interpretation” (1967 finalist) is brimming with evenings out experiencing things, followed by evenings in describing them (including a merry takedown of Ernest Hemingway). Her sentences are alive with unresolved, still-in-process thinking; the collection ends just before she turned to writing against the Vietnam War.

Arendt’s thought was rooted in World War II and the culture it arrested, the future conflicts it had already failed to stem. In her essay on the German writer Walter Benjamin, exiled from his home country by war, Arendt seems to implicitly pick up Jacobs’s treatise on the importance of a city’s sidewalk life, extending the strangers we meet there to the homeless and stateless who might still find some place to gather. When Arendt writes that technology has made surprising communities, so that every country is “the almost immediate neighbor of every other country, and every man feels the shock of events which take place at the other side of the globe,” social media is the premonition. She, of course, is talking about atomic weapons.

One of the more fascinating and now less-known books of this era is Alice Kimball Smith’s “A Peril and a Hope” (1966 finalist), which examines, sometimes in hour-by-hour detail, how scientists involved in the Manhattan Project tried to manage the impact of the nuclear bomb during its development and in the years just following its use in World War II. (Smith later co-edited an anthology of Robert Oppenheimer’s letters.) Her book is ultimately about the failure of two distinct communities — science and politics — to find a common language through which to understand each other. Though scientists were not in consensus, many of them wanted the United States to be transparent with other countries about its nuclear capabilities — the original hope was that the mere demonstration of an atomic bomb, like the test in the Nevada desert, would persuade our enemies to surrender. Where does home end and the “other” begin?

I admire the small but profound choices of emphasis these writers made. In “Silent Spring,” Carson gave “housewives” the same weight as scientists, citing numerous letters they wrote to newspapers, town councils and ornithologists noting the effects of insecticides and weed killers on wildlife in their neighborhoods. Women may have barely been represented among the scientists employed in the atomic project, but that didn’t stop Smith from writing that community’s definitive story. (Despite having earned a doctorate, Smith is still mostly identified as the wife of one of the Manhattan Project scientists, underscoring why she was better positioned than most to understand the perils of secrecy. Her book is out of print and difficult to access, even in libraries.)

The 1960s cemented a certain intellectual curiosity and urgency around the environment, race and war, subjects that remain the sources of the deepest schisms in our communities. It’s hard not to feel these books shouting from the shelves to be read again for what they can tell us about their time and our own, as the present continuously, swiftly becomes history. Think of microplastics in our water and forever chemicals in our organic salads; the “epidemic” of loneliness diagnosed by the surgeon general, whose recommended treatment directly maps to Jacobs’s prescriptions for a city block; the ongoing racism across the country that turns back small gains made since 2020; Russia’s investment in atomic satellites and deployment of “tactical” nuclear weapons; the uprooting, starvation and death of tens of thousands of children in Gaza and elsewhere.

These writers have shown me that it’s better to step into the mire, to be not at peace with the world but constantly making something of it. That something can be small and local. It can be beautiful and pleasurable in spite of — even because of — what is at stake. Or as Brooks put it, “Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the/ whirlwind.”

Prudence Peiffer is the author of “The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever.”

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"To Kill a Mockingbird": Empathy Quotes

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Published: Mar 16, 2024

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Atticus finch's wisdom, miss maudie's metaphor, tom robinson's example.

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