The good of Harper Lee It makes it easy for us in the particular effort of this space to subjectively select the best works by each author. His two novels are his legacy in terms of fictional narrative and in their comparison the selection that we will address next is usually born easily.
In the credit of this writer we find that great immortal work, blinding for an author overwhelmed by its repercussion. It already happened with Kennedy Toole and «The conspiracy of fools«. Or with patrick sukind and "The perfume." Or even with salinger and "The Catcher in the Rye."
All of them, along with Harper, makers of that novel considered a masterpiece that translated into the practicality of their lives as creators, was one more slab to continue writing. It is not easy to create with the sword of perfection hanging over their heads like Damocles from literature.
But I don't know why I intuit the case of Harper Lee as something different. Like the happy Assumption of the literary and even cinematographic glory of "To kill a nightingale" without further creative torment.
If your great story overwhelmingly reached the world, what difference does it make that you can't match it? Harper Lee usually smiled with satisfaction, with the royaltis well secured and something else, butterfly.
Because the published in 2015, the year before his death, of «Go and post a sentry«It seems more like an act beyond her control, a way of stretching or complementing a bibliography that for her would surely already be full with that flash of inspiration and ingenuity that made her immortal:
Harper Lee's Recommended Books
Kill a Mockingbird
The brilliant metaphor of the title as a crude comparison with the openly prevailing racism in the United States of the 30s. A country loaded with complexes and atavistic guilt that forced the white man to seek his reinforcement from the moral conviction that justified classism based on skin color.
Of course, things were accentuated in the southeast of the country, where farms in the primary sector concentrated large groups of workers of color. And to Alabama itself we move from the memories of Jean Louise Finch, a wayward girl and even violent if she had to get involved in any cause.
Known since those days as Scout, Jean keeps fiery memories of strange days. His father's determination to defend the black Tom Robinson, accused of sexual assault, upset all those days of his childhood. Maybe it wasn't a good morning.
And yet now Jean knows that then he learned the great lesson of his life about humanity, ethics and civility. Surely it didn't matter who the perpetrator of the rape was.
With the mere suspicion that any of those despicable blacks could overdo the victim, the people entered a state of anger capable of anything.
But thanks to examples such as Atticus, the girl's father, we reinforced the idea that justice should be the same for everyone, although only as an exception to the rule until today; as a paradigm of lost causes; as an example that you can't lose before you fight.
Go and post a sentry
A kind of prequel, or sequel, depending on how you look at it. Because although it is said that this work was born from the rescue of an extensive draft by the author, the events narrated start a long time after "Killing a nightingale", despite the fact that the plot also revolves based on the same.
The fight in the case of the rape that Atticus led is seen, more than twenty years later, as a vague memory that, however, he added so that society aims for change, finding recalcitrant racists but already faced with as many or more revolutionaries from full color.
That girl from whom we saw the first part, Jean, is already a young woman in search of her destiny in the Big Apple. The story begins in one of her trips as an adult to the origin, to her parents' house.
And what happens sometimes happens to all of us. Jean feels that in part she has betrayed the Scout that she was, her principles and her life plans. He has no choice but to laugh at his miseries and perhaps make amends.
In any case, the full figure of his father's integrity in the hard days of the case of the people against Tom Robinson and even today, they help him to consider that it is always possible to start over ...
2 comments on “The best books by Harper Lee”