Literature Discussion Group: To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

25 September 2011

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Our first book for 2011-2012, was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We met on September 19th to discuss it. At that meeting, everyone took a bit of time to plot out the story arc of the novel, adding the events that stood out most for them to a timeline of their own shape.

The timelines varied in format - some were arcs, some looked like mountain ranges with multiple peaks and valleys, and others made a steady climb toward the climax before dropping off at the end. It was interesting to hear which events had the most impact on readers, and at what points in the book people felt the most suspense or build-up.

Here's a section of mine.

I wish I'd had more time to improve the artwork - and to add a few more events. Much to Theo's horror, I completely omitted the mad dog incident. Oops.

In creating our "arcs," we discussed the following terms: generating circumstances, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement (or resolution). We'll talk more about these terms - and many others - as they relate to short stories at our next meeting.

1 comment:

ZeroOctober 14, 2011 at 11:25 AM
Well....we all know the dog we the best part don't we?
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Looking For Hamlet Scholar Talk

This is another event at the PPL in March in honor of the First Folio Exhibit, and it's on Wednesday, March 9th from 12-1:30pm in the Rines Auditorium.

"Focusing on Hamlet, University of Southern Maine Professor Ben Bertram will examine the way editors, directors, actors, teachers, and scholars choose among folio, quarto, or conflated versions of the plays. He will also be accompanied by actors who will perform Hamlet’s soliloquies and join in a discussion of how Shakespeare’s words make it from the page to the stage."

Get the full description here.

Definitions and Clarifications

pneumatic, adj. - literally, full of air. This term is often used to describe women in BNW, and seems to suggest that a woman like Lenina, who's "wonderfully pneumatic," is buxom, curvy, shapely, and yes, even bouncy. But pneumatic could also have a second meaning here, and that is to indicate that someone is a bit of an air-head, light on the intellectual matter, or not bogged down by weighty matters or considerations.

viviparous, adj. - a creature that is viviparous gives birth to live young that develop inside the body, as in the way mammals reproduce. Humans are viviparous (at least, they were until A.F. 632).

Malthusian, adj. - based on the beliefs of Robert Thomas Malthus, a British economist who argued that "population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease." - The Free Dictionary

Pavlovian Conditioning, n. - also called Classic Conditioning, it's a way of getting a subject to make certain associations between two previously unrelated things; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was the psychologist who discovered that if he always rang a bell right before feeding his dogs, they came to associate the sound of the bell with getting fed, and therefore would start to drool upon hearing the bell. Here's a great comic related to that experiment.

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25 September 2011

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

1 comment: