To Kill a Mockingbird 杀死一只知更鸟(英文版)

Harper Lee, the contemporary American writer, is noticeable for her great novel To Kill

a Mockingbird which has been welcomed and loved by readers since its publication. This

novel focuses on the trial of the black man Tom though the eyes of the little girl Scout who

experiences innocence to mature in order to display the social reality and assail the social

evils such as the social hierarchy, racial discrimination and the dark side of human nature, at

the same time, the author convinces the reader that there is still good and justice in human

being.

While To Kill a Mockingbird has been a bestseller that won reader’s love since it was

published in 1960, and the book received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. In 1999, it

was named \"the best novel of the century\" in an investigation launched by the library

magazine. Harper • Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, but the

study of the novel is relatively few, in view of this, the paper tries to analyze To Kill a

Mockingbird from the wide range of influence on American Literature－Gothic feature to

allow more readers to appreciate the charm of the novel.

All in all, the use of Gothic elements in Harper • Lee To Kill a Mockingbird enhances the

readability of the novel, giving their works a special artistic charm and making it handed

down among the enduring masterpiece.

Harper Lee is an American writer, who earns her fame worldwide by writing the novel

To Kill a Mockingbird, which is prized by the novelist and essayist Truman

Capote:

“Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the

warmest, most authentic humor. A touching book…so likeable.”

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Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1962, in Monroeville, Alabama, whose father was a

lawyer. One of Lee’s childhood friends was the future novelist and essayist Truman Capote

who lived with relatives next door to Lee’s family. During her undergraduate studies at the

University of Alabama, Lee wrote for several student publications, which built a solid

foundation for her future writing. In the mid 1950s, she moved to New York City, where she

completed and published To Kill a Mockingbird in the year 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird was

an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for

Literature in April 1961. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United

States for her contribution to literature in 2007.

To Kill a Mockingbird tells the growth of the little heroine both in physical and mental,

in which the little girl learns a lot of lessons from what she has experienced. The major event

involving the trial of the black young man who is actually innocent displays the main social

problem－racial prejudice in that age.

The novel focuses on the story occurs in the small town Maycomb that suffers the sever

Great Depression. Scout and Jem are reared by their father, for their mother died when they

were very young. During summer vacation they make acquaintance with Dill

who is in his

aunt’s. The three children get together to have more exciting adventures. They venture to the

mysterious house, in which lives an eccentric person－ Boo Radley who is actually a victim

of his father’s indifference and autocratic. However, they are scared to death by the large

shadow of Boo’s brother and rushed home. Late in the night, Atticus is informed of the case

in which the black young man Tom is accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Atticus promised todefend for Tom. Tom is sentenced to death although Atticus shows Tom’s innocence by the

self-evident testimony. After the trial ends, life returns to quietness, but Ewell vows to

retaliate for he feels he is fooled by Atticus and Judge. Scout and Jem are attacked by Bob

Ewell on the late night of Halloween. At the dangerous moment, they are saved by Boo

Radley who becomes the real human being rather than a freak in their mind.

Gothic fiction is associated with the development of aesthetic concept sublimity. Since

the classic On the Sublime written by Longinus in the late 17th century, has been translated

into English, many critics and writers have discussed and explored the origin of sublimity,

who argue consistently that the grand, horrible things can cause a lofty beauty. This kind of

view is further developed by the well-known British political commentator and critic,

Edmund Burke in the 18th century. In his aesthetics book A Philosophical Inquiry into the

Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful , he expresses his view in one section Of the

Sublime in this book: “Whatever is in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is

to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in amanner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest

emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.”

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Harper Lee has been influenced by the Gothic tradition in South America in a certain

degree. Five years after she was born, the notorious trial-the Scottsboro Case occurred, in

which the nine young black men were charged with raping two white women and became the

victims of racial prejudice. With that age as the setting, Harper Lee catches the climate of the

age and criticizes the racial discrimination in her work To Kill a Mockingbird. The book

gives a vivid description of a panorama of America in the 1930s, which echoes the civil

rights movement in the 1960s. After its publication the book was well-sold and became a big

shot.

To Kill a Mockingbird is regarded as the second book only next to The Holy Bible in

being “most often cited as making a difference” in people’s lives. It is still a controversial

question whether Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird belongs to the Gothic fiction or

not. However, to some extend, the Gothic tradition is deeply rooted in South American

literature and exerts a great influence on the writers’ writing style. Harper Lee uses the

Gothic writing techniques skillfully.

As an American masterpiece in the contemporary canons, To Kill a Mockingbird

strengthens its high position with its frequent publication and its population

from the readers.

However, at the time of its publication, the novel met the hostility and criticism rather than

agreement and praise from the critics and scholars. When it came to Harper Lee’s writing

techniques, Granville Hicks, the famous critics of Lee’s age, pointed out that the point of

view is not as satisfactory as the rest of the novel. Phoebe Adams, the reviewer of The

Atlantic Monthly did not agree with the point of view as well by saying that it was

unconvinced that the narrator was a girl of six with a tone of a well-educated adult.

In To Kill

a Mockingbird, Harper Lee fully shows her writing skills by employing the Gothic writing

technique in the whole novel to create the mysterious atmosphere and

eccentric characters to

reveal the social reality, which makes the reader curious and enlightened. In this paper, To

Kill a Mockingbird is analyzed from its motif, setting, plot and character to show its Gothic

features such as mystery, violence, the supernatural, so on and so forth. The thesis contains

four parts: the first chapter is named Gothic motif; the second chapter is called Gothic setting;

the third is Gothic plot; the fourth is Gothic character. The focus of the first chapter is the

analysis of the Gothic Motifs such as violence, disfigured love and imprisonment. The second

chapter aims to analyze the Gothic settings, mainly from two aspects: the absurdity of the

social environment and the mysterious and haunted atmosphere. The third Chapter analyzes

the mysterious suspense, the grotesque foreboding and the supernatural episode in terms of

the Gothic plot in order to show the specialty of the plot and the ingenuity of the author’s

writing skills. The last chapter put emphasis on the description of the Gothic characters at two

points: the insanity and the eccentricity to help the readers understand the characters deeply

and makes the novel a charming one.