To Kill a Mockingbird
Adapted by Christopher Sergel
from a novel by Harper Lee
Directed by Clark Neher
Based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning book of 1960. Atticus Finch is a lawyer in a racially divided Alabama town in the 1930s. He agrees to defend a young black man who is accused of raping a white woman. Many of the townspeople try to get Atticus to pull out of the trial, but he decides to go ahead. How will the trial turn out – and will it change any of the racial tension in the town?
Through the eyes of “Scout,” a feisty six-year-old tomboy, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD carries us on an odyssey through the fires of prejudice and injustice in 1932 Alabama. Presenting her tale first as a sweetly lulling reminiscence of events from her childhood, the narrator draws us near with stories of daring neighborhood exploits by she, her brother “Jem,” and their friend “Dill.” Peopled with a cast of eccentrics, Maycomb (“a tired and sleepy town”) finds itself the venue of the trial of Tom Robinson, a young black man falsely accused of raping an ignorant white woman. Atticus Finch, Scout and Jem’s widowed father and a deeply principled man, is appointed to defend Tom for whom a guilty verdict from an all-white jury is a foregone conclusion. Juxtaposed against the story of the trial is the children’s hit and run relationship with Boo Radley, a shut-in who the children and Dill’s Aunt Rachel suspect of insanity and who no one has seen in recent history. Cigar-box treasures, found in the knot hole of a tree near the ramshackle Radley house, temper the children’s judgment of Boo. “You never know someone,” Atticus tells Scout, “until you step inside their skin and walk around a little.” But fear keeps them at a distance until one night, in streetlight and shadows, the children confront an evil born of ignorance and blind hatred and must somehow find their way home.
Through the eyes of “Scout,” a feisty six-year-old tomboy, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD carries us on an odyssey through the fires of prejudice and injustice in 1932 Alabama. Presenting her tale first as a sweetly lulling reminiscence of events from her childhood, the narrator draws us near with stories of daring neighborhood exploits by she, her brother “Jem,” and their friend “Dill.” Peopled with a cast of eccentrics, Maycomb (“a tired and sleepy town”) finds itself the venue of the trial of Tom Robinson, a young black man falsely accused of raping an ignorant white woman. Atticus Finch, Scout and Jem’s widowed father and a deeply principled man, is appointed to defend Tom for whom a guilty verdict from an all-white jury is a foregone conclusion. Juxtaposed against the story of the trial is the children’s hit and run relationship with Boo Radley, a shut-in who the children and Dill’s Aunt Rachel suspect of insanity and who no one has seen in recent history. Cigar-box treasures, found in the knot hole of a tree near the ramshackle Radley house, temper the children’s judgment of Boo. “You never know someone,” Atticus tells Scout, “until you step inside their skin and walk around a little.” But fear keeps them at a distance until one night, in streetlight and shadows, the children confront an evil born of ignorance and blind hatred and must somehow find their way home.
