An EXPLORE MEMPHIS Summer 2015 Book Club Guide to
Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Created by Facing History and Ourselves, in partnership with Memphis Public Library and the City of Memphis
To Kill a Mockingbird remains an enormously popular and relevant book, 55 years after it was first
published. It has sold more than 30 million copies, won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more
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than 40 languages, and been voted best novel of the 20 century by librarians across the country.
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And it remained Harper Lee’s first and final novel, or so it appeared. On February 3 , Lee’s publisher
stunned book lovers around the world when it announced that Harper Lee was to publish a
rediscovered manuscript (the first draft of Mockingbird) called Go Set a Watchman, due to be
released in July, featuring an adult Scout returning to Maycomb, Alabama, 20 years after the events
of the original book. Will it reveal what happened to the characters and how the town of Maycomb
changed (or not) in the ensuing years? As we await these and other answers, there could be no
better time to read or re-read the beloved novel that introduced Scout, Jem, Atticus, Tom, Boo, and
many others to the world.
About This Book Club Guide
To Kill a Mockingbird is a story of justice, judgment, and morality, as well as family, gender, and race.
It is a story that prompts us to reflect on our own moral compass and our place in the community
where we live. This guide is based on Teaching Mockingbird, a study guide that Facing History and
Ourselves published last winter, to provide a richer historical context and to bring a fresh eye to the
themes that make this novel so enduring.
You and your book club can choose to use any or all parts of this guide. We have included
culminating discussion questions, as well as suggestions for additional resources (historical
background, short videos, etc.), which can help you dig deeper into particular themes.
Introducing a Central Question
Literary critic Wayne C. Booth wrote that the plots of great stories “are built out of the characters’
efforts to face moral choices. In tracing those efforts, we readers stretch our own capacities for
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thinking about how life should be lived.” With that in mind, this central question can guide you as
you read Mockingbird and consider Scout’s and Jem’s experiences:
What factors influence our moral growth? What kinds of experiences help us learn
how to judge right from wrong?
Suggested Discussion Questions
1. What scene from the book resonated with or impacted you the most? Why?
2. Early in the book, Atticus and Scout talk about “Maycomb’s ways.” What stands out to you
most about the customs, traditions, and unwritten rules in Maycomb’s society? How do race,
class, and gender affect one’s position and opportunities?
3. Atticus tells Scout, “If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all
kinds of folks. 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.” Can you ever fully understand
another person’s point of view? What is the value in trying?
4. Atticus explains to Scout, “This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends.
But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still
our home.” Are there some fights you can have with friends that make it impossible to
remain friends? What does it say about Atticus that he doesn’t view the insults he receives
for defending Tom Robinson as reason to end any friendships? How can you respond when
friends or family members express views that you find abhorrent?
5. Who is most responsible for the injustices that Tom Robinson and his family endured?
6. Do you think Atticus is a good parent? Why or why not? What is he trying to instill in his
children? Do you think he is successful?
7. Scout says that shortly after the Tom Robinson verdict, Maycomb “became itself” again. What
does that mean? What role does forgetting play in the community’s response? Who wants to
forget? Who cannot? When is forgetting helpful, and when is it destructive?
8. How do the resolutions of the stories of Tom Robinson and Boo Radley complicate the
relationship between the law and justice?
9. In what ways did Scout’s understanding of right and wrong change over the course of the
novel? What about Jem’s understanding?
10. Do you think there is a hero in To Kill a Mockingbird? If so, who is it? Who was your favorite
character?
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Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 187.
Taking It Further
Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird in the late 1950s, early in the civil rights movement, and
portrayed small-town Southern life in the 1930s. The following resources can provide additional
historical context for the period that Harper Lee portrays. All of these can be found at
facinghistory.org/mockingbird.
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“Understanding Jim Crow”: In this 8-minute video, professor David Cunningham explores the
systems of racial separation and institutionalized segregation known as Jim Crow and how it
played out across small southern towns in the 1930s. (Find under “videos.”)
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“The Origins of Lynching Culture”: In this 10-minute video, professor Paula Giddings
discusses the history of lynching. She explains that lynching came about during the
Revolutionary War as a system of extralegal justice. Initially, lynching was applied equally to
whites and blacks, but eventually became racialized in the late 1800s. (Find under “videos.”)
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“The Birthday Party,” an excerpt from Virginia Foster Durr’s autobiography, Outside the
Magic Circle, recalls how the customs of the Jim Crow South affected her seventh birthday
party. (Find under “handouts.”)
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“You Worked Long Hours,” an excerpt from Telling Memories Among Southern Women
by Susan Tucker, is an interview with Essie Favrot, who was born in 1910 and worked for
Southern white families as a domestic worker for several decades. (Find under
“handouts.”)
You can find many other first-person narratives, reflecting different experiences during this period
based on race, class, and gender in Teaching Mockingbird: A Facing History and Ourselves Study
Guide, available as a free download at facinghistory.org/mockingbird. You can also find a summary
of the Scottsboro Affair, a so-called “courtroom lynching” that occurred during the 1930s when nine
black teenagers were accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama. As these events
were reported in newspapers around the world, many believe they were the inspiration for the story
of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Connecting to the Film
You may want to follow up your discussion by watching the classic 1962 film adaptation, and
comparing and contrasting the two versions of the story. Many Memphis libraries have screenings
scheduled this summer, or you can borrow the DVD from your local branch.
Suggested Discussion Questions
1. What are the most noticeable changes that screenwriter Horton Foote made in his film
adaptation of the novel? What differences in characters, setting, and plot are most obvious?
How do those changes impact the way you experience and respond to the story?
2. How does the film present the world of Maycomb differently from the way the book does?
Which scenes in the film are pivotal in helping the viewer understand “Maycomb’s ways”?
What important details about Maycomb from the book are left out in the film?
3. Who do you think is the main character or hero of To Kill a Mockingbird? Did you answer this
question differently before viewing the film version? Why or why not?
4. How do the differences in characters, setting, and plot in the film affect its thematic focus?
Which ongoing cultural conversations from the book are emphasized most strongly in the
film? Which ones are diminished or missing?
Explore Memphis!
Find out more about the related history of Memphis:
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Learn more about the history of Jim Crow at the National Civil Rights Museum
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Visit Tom Lee Park and learn more about Tom Lee, an African American man who, in 1925,
saved 33 people from a sinking ship in the Mississippi.
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Visit the STAX Museum and explore stories of black and white business owners and
musicians who worked together during a time of segregation.
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Find the historic marker for Ida B Wells and the People's Grocery, which sparked a
national anti-lynching campaign.
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And make sure you join us on Sunday, August 9 , 1:30pm, at the Benjamin Hooks Central Library
(Meeting Rooms ABC), for a Celebration of Book Clubs! For more information, visit
explorememphis.org.
About the Memphis Public Library and Information Center
The Memphis Public Library and Information Center (MPLIC) is committed to satisfying the customer’s need to
know. With 18 Library locations throughout the Greater Memphis area, MPLIC offers an array of programs,
services, and resources for citizens and visitors to enjoy. They include JobLINC mobile career services, LINC/2-11 telephone referral services, a TV and radio station (WYPL TV-18, WYPL FM 89.3), a small business center,
laptops for checkout and free Wi-Fi access, in addition to books, e-books, DVDs, records, compact discs, and
educational programs for children, teens, and adults. Customers can find age-appropriate services and a list of
Library locations at www.memphislibrary.org. Memphis Public Libraries are publicly and privately funded.
Approximately three million people visit the Memphis Public Library and Information Center each year.
About Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History and Ourselves is an international educational and professional development organization whose
mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism
in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. Founded by classroom
teachers in 1976, Facing History trains and supports educators, develops curricular materials, and provides
myriad resources and programs designed to help students make the essential connection between history and
the moral choices they confront in their own lives. Facing History Memphis (established in 1992) is located at
115 Huling Avenue, Memphis. For more information, call us at 901-452-1776.