Harper Lee’s death – Aftonbladet

Harper Lee’s death.

On Friday morning could mayor of Monroeville, Alabama, where she lived almost his entire life, acknowledge that she passed away, 89 years old.

Had it happened two years ago, it might not have been a particularly big news. Her masterpiece, her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (cardinal sin), had gradually started to fall into oblivion.

Sure, the myth of the mysterious and isolated writer grown over the years, because she never published any more, but the years take their toll even on an immortal classic.

Last year came the shock. There was a continuation. Or a prequel to the Star Wars generation learned that it is called.

Thanks to a – perhaps we should not say dishonest, but all the attention-hungry – lawyer rooted script out of a bank vault and published.

And got disappointed reviews.

The last chapter in the story of the Harper Lee’s life explained her long silence. She simply had no more to come by. She helped admittedly childhood friend Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood, but her own writing consisted only of a single novel.

But the novel it is!

Written during the civil rights movement’s most intense years, a writer who knew everything about the American South’s apartheid society, became the story of the rape trial in Maycomb large sydstatsroman all others must measure themselves against.

Margaret Mitchell, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor must excuse, they may be more brilliant writer, but Harper Lee wrote the iconic work.

The story of lawyer Atticus Finch struggle to free the Black Tom Robinson from the charge of raping the white woman Mayella Ewell had a special luminosity.

there was an authoritarian and old-fashioned male hero. Brutal class antagonisms. A terrifying mystery. But above all a dim warm humanist message with clear anti-racist sting.

The book was made compulsory reading in American schools. What is the main reason why it received such a cult status. The novel became simply, unlike many other books mentioned, actually read.

I wish I could say goodbye to Harper Lee with those words.

But her only novel is unfortunately uncomfortable date so here half a century after it was written.

Again, distorted statistics and horror stories of mass rapes have become a recruitment tool for racist movements. Right appliance challenged by the self-styled garden which claims to want to protect “our women” against blacks, perverted men. And just like in Harper Lee’s novel, the result of lynch mobs running around the streets.

It should not be needed more to do To Kill A Mockingbird to the required reading also for future generations of students.