Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird Essay Assignment

After reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and watching the film version, your assignment is to complete an essay that is at least 500 words (1 ½ pages typed) answering one the questions below. Remember that your essay must be typed, Times New Roman, 12 pt font, black ink and 1 inch margins. You should be writing this for a formal audience. In other words, the essay must be well structured and presented in a way that the reader finds easy to follow and clear. Above all, the essay must consist of your ideas about the literary text and film.

To effectively complete this assignment you must proofread your paper for grammatical, spelling, capitalization errors. You must construct logical paragraph organization and have an effective thesis statement. As always, provide the source of all quotations, all ideas that are not yours, and information that is not common knowledge in the body of the essay and in the end in a Work’s Cited.

Answer one of the following questions:

The American Film Institute polled Americans for whom they considered the top 50 heroes in American film and Gregory Peck won. Why do you think Americans look to Atticus Finch as a hero? Be sure to use the novel and/or film to back up your statements. You may want to consider the following questions when composing your essay. What qualities make Atticus such an appealing figure? What beliefs does he live by? Does his behavior conform to his ideals? How does he impart his ideals to his children and his community? Is he a believable character or too good to be true?

Discuss the differences between the novel and the film version. Specifically identify three ideas or concepts that were in the novel but left out of the film. How does the deletion of each scene affect the film? Be sure to use the novel and film to back up your statements. The three scenes must correlate.

Atticus says that people need to crawl inside other people’s skin and see things from their point of view. Analyze this theme and find where characters in the book demonstrate this act of seeing from another’s perspective. You must identify at least three examples. You may want to consider the following questions when composing your essay. What good comes from your examples? How does the person see from another’s perspective? What motivated the character to see from another’s perspective? What caused a character to see from another character’s perspective? How was the character’s behavior different afterwards?

To Kill a Mockingbird has been challenged repeatedly for its portrayal of conflict between children and adults, ungrammatical speech, references to sex, references to the supernatural and witchcraft; an unfavorable presentation of blacks. For these reasons it has been on many “banned books” lists. Do you agree or disagree with these criticisms of the book? Do you think this book should be banned from school libraries? Do you think it should be banned from public libraries? Why? You will need to do some research on this topic.

You will be getting computer lab time on Wednesday to type your essay.

This assignment is due on Friday, January 11 at the beginning of the hour.

There will be no passes to print!