Reading a good book is like taking a bite into an ice cream sundae on a hot summer day, it is refreshing and excites the senses. With the thousands of books that are published each year it is hard to decide which ones are worth reading and which ones to avoid. Some components to look for in good literature are things like moral lessons that can endure time and can be relevant 40 years after being published. As well good literature makes you think and feel strongly about the themes of the work. Good literature can be read over and over again each time receiving a new component which was not realized before.
Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, is a novel that takes on the complex issues of racism within a community and the justice system. In this novel a white man, Atticus Finch, takes on the case of a black man, Tom Robinson, who has allegedly raped a white teenager, Mayella. In the setting of Maycomb, a city in a southern American state in the 1930s, it is considered appalling that Atticus Finch would be defending Robinson. In the time that this book was published it was only 12 years earlier that Order 9981 was made which stated the equal rights and treatment of all races and religions, and only five years earlier that Rosa Parks stood up on the bus for her rights. That being said this book in its time would have been social criticism, and still applies to today world. Looking at cases like Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin there is a direct connection that can be made to the case of Tom Robinson. Infact many protestors have used various quotes from To Kill A Mockingbird in their protests including a conversation between Scout and Atticus when Robinson is convicted as guilty “How could they do it, how could they?" "I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children