Imagine a skyscraper. Within the skyscraper was filled with hundreds of filing cabinets filled to the brim with ideas. Now imagine a rattling, bone-shaking, and an ugly windstorm. The skyscraper falls dramatically to the ground. The fall shatters the windows. The structure crumbles the filing cabinets. The ideas are in the air. Then, terribly, the ideas are pulled apart and torn by the fast and strong wind. The skyscraper was built by me. The filing cabinets were bought by me. You remember those ideas? Those ideas were absolutely 100% mine. The windstorm was created by Harper Lee and was gladly delivered by To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird has impacted me greatly, specifically in my writing. After reading this book, I don’t want to ever write another story the same way, again! I have read over a hundred novels, but not one has made me even slightly reconsider my writing ideals.  Then To Kill a Mockingbird came along and it utterly destroyed all my ideals in writing! But in a good way. The book perfectly teaches the reader how to write characters, emotion, and meaning.

All Harper Lee’s fictional characters are fantastic. They are flawed and emotional which ultimately makes the characters heavily relatable and impactful. Probably the main reason Harper Lee’s characters are so profound is because they are inspired by real people. I always smile and laugh when I think of the friendship between Dill and Scout. Dill was inspired by Truman Capote, Harper Lee’s good friend. Of course I enjoyed it then, because the friendship wasn’t built on air but reality and truth. This same reason is probably why the emotions in this book felt so genuine as well.
 

Emotion was something that was constantly evoked in the book. I cried about 3 times in this 376 paged book. I have read 600 paged books before, and they never made me cry once. To Kill a Mockingbird’s main character Scout is only but a child, which makes her know very little. There are many times where Scout doesn’t fully understand something. In this frustrated confusion her control of her emotions constantly escapes her. The emotions eventually lead her to gain comfort from her father, Atticus. In most books I read, when the main characters experience emotion somehow they can just walk off and skip to a completely different emotion without no comfort, no resolve, or no support. Harper Lee really captured emotion well and the dissipation of emotion. Everyone desires some comfort or relief from harsh emotion to help make it dissipate. The most common place to find comfort is from other people. Emotion is spontaneous, troubling, and constant. It makes all of us (people), if it’s strong enough, go insane! I honestly believe most writers (I, as well) should write more about emotion in depth than about our characters strength. The strong characters we write about is not emotionally stable or healthy.
 

The most important aspect of the book was the meaning. Ultimately, if there was no meaning there would be no emotion. If there was no emotion the characters would then be very flat. Then it wouldn’t be a world-renown book.
 

"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

 Harper Lee only ever mentioned how it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird twice throughout the rest of the book and in comparison to characters in the book. The characters are Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. Tom Robinson is a black, crippled man wrongfully accused of rape, and the comparison was after his death. Boo Radley is a strange, harsh rumored person, and his comparison mentioned in the decision to falsify reports to not bring attention to Boo for murdering Bob Ewell. There are a few similarities between Boo Radley and Tom Robinson; that they are both men, they both have a relation to death (one died, the other killed someone), and they both met Atticus Finch. But the most important shared quality between these two characters that directly relates back to the quote is that they are seen as innocent in the book. Tom Robinson shouldn’t have been in jail, which lead to his death, because he was judged wrongly. He was an innocent man. Boo Radley only killed Bob Ewell to save children from being assaulted or murdered. He was an innocent man. The meaning of the book was that you shouldn’t hurt innocent people because they never did anything wrong.
 

I learned about characters, meaning, and emotion on much a deeper level. I thought characters had to be admirable. I was wrong. They have to relatable! My opinion of emotion was feeble, but it’s a much greater aspect of writing. I never deeply thought about the meaning I want to portray in my stories, which ultimately made them not as impactful. To Kill A Mockingbird seriously did crumple every single idea I had, but I’m not upset by it at all. I’m glad I learned these lessons; it will create better ideas. My family raised me to strive to always be better, never to stay exactly the same. I must thank Harper Lee for teaching me these wonderful lessons and for my future progression. Thanks, Harper Lee, for being a good friend through pages.