To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · United States, 1960 (set in 1930s Alabama) · Non-African prose · WAEC set text 2026–2030
Why it is on the list
The most widely-read novel on the list. Racism, law, and growing up. You still have to quote it, not just know the film.
Setting
Maycomb, a small town in the American South, during the Depression.
The story
- Scout (Jean Louise) Finch, six, lives with her brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a lawyer, in Maycomb.
- The children are obsessed with their reclusive neighbour, Arthur “Boo” Radley, and invent dares around his house.
- Atticus is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a Black man accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a poor white girl. The town turns on the Finches.
- The trial shows Tom could not have committed the assault (his left arm is useless; the bruises came from a left-handed man — Mayella’s father, Bob Ewell). The all-white jury convicts him anyway. Tom is later shot trying to escape.
- Bob Ewell, shamed, attacks the children at night. Boo Radley saves them and kills Ewell. Sheriff Tate insists Ewell “fell on his knife”, to spare Boo a trial. Scout walks Boo home and, standing on his porch, finally sees the street as he has seen it.
Characters
- Scout Finch
- Narrator, looking back as an adult on her childhood. Tomboy, questioner, the moral education of the book.
- Atticus Finch
- Father and defence lawyer. Courage as “when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway”.
- Jem Finch
- Scout’s brother. His faith in the court is broken by the verdict.
- Tom Robinson
- The accused. Kind, trapped by a system that has already decided.
- Boo Radley
- The hidden neighbour who is the other mockingbird — harmless, hunted by rumour, finally the one who saves.
- Bob & Mayella Ewell
- Accusers. Poverty, pride, and a lie that the town is ready to believe.
- Calpurnia
- The Finches’ cook; Scout’s other parent; a bridge between the Black and white worlds of Maycomb.
Themes
- Racial injustice — the law can be correct and the verdict still wrong.
- Empathy: “climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
- The mockingbird: it is a sin to kill something that only sings. Tom and Boo.
- Childhood ending — Jem and Scout learn the town’s real rules.
In the exam
- The trial is Chapter 17–21. Know who sits where, what Atticus proves, and why it does not matter.
- Boo and Tom are a pair. A question on one is often answered better with both.
- Scout’s voice is a child seeing adult things. Do not write as if she understood everything at the time.