‘People are entitled to full respect for their opinions. But before I live with others, I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.’

That’s what Atticus tells his daughter Scout in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’,  when she questions his decision to defend a black man against the opinion of practically everyone in the town they live in.  It’s my favourite quote and it’s from one of my most favourite books – which is celebrating its golden jubilee today. The book was first published exactly fifty years to the date on July 11th, 1960 and has never gone out of print since then. The Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ has been translated into 40 languages and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck in 1965. The novel also constantly figures on almost every poll of favourite books, rated by both readers and scholars across the world.

With the United States in the midst of a civil rights movement when it was first published, the book became renowned for its central theme of racial injustice. The story revolves around Atticus Finch, a lawyer with a liberal attitude. He is a widower with two young children: Jem and Scout. When Atticus is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl, Jem and Scout are forced to confront the reality of racial prejudice in the small fictional county they live in – Maycomb.

My own reasons for treasuring the novel however, go beyond its central premise. It’s the characterisation and universal values that strike a chord. From Scout and Jem’s loss of innocence to lessons on how courage and tolerance never go out fashion, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ always has something that you can learn from or reminisce about.

One of the things that takes me back to my own childhood is how the narrator Scout faces the fallout of being a little-miss-know-it-all at a young age. Here’s Scout describing her first day at school –

As I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows (the teacher Miss Caroline), and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.

Scout being rebuked reminded me of instances, such as  the time I was asked not to use big words like ‘humongous’ in the classroom, as other children had never heard of them.

The relationship Scout shares with her elder brother Jem, is one of the most captivating factors throughout the novel for me and brings back fond memories of how I was the constant  (and sometimes unwanted) sidekick to my elder brother – whether it was running around and coming up with secret games or plotting against nasty neighbours; we, just like the Finches, always presented a united front.

Jem condescended to take me to school the first day, a job usually done by one’s parents, but Atticus had said Jem would be delighted to show me where my room was. I think some money changed hands in this transaction, for as we trotted around the corner past the Radley Place I heard an unfamiliar jingle in Jem’s pockets.

Scout is appalled when Jem is sent to apologise to a mean neighbour for ruining her garden in retaliation  to her vitriolic attack on their father –

For the life of me, I did not understand how he could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered…Of course Jem antagonised me sometimes until I could kill him, but when it came down to it he was all I had.

Scout’s puppy love with her childhood pal Dill (who befriends them while spending his summers with his aunt in Maycomb) is another heart-warming relationship that runs through the novel –

Dill was becoming something of a trial anyway, following Jem about. He asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He stalked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem.

The core of the novel is Atticus’s words of wisdom that are reserved for his children and always demonstrated through example –

If you can learn a simple trick Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Through the example of their old neighbour Mrs Dubose, Atticus teaches his children about the true meaning of courage –

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win but sometimes you do.

When Scout and Jem receive air-rifles for Christmas, Atticus takes the opportunity to explain to them how wrong it is to persecute those who are nothing but innocent and good which is then reiterated in the novel through the characters of Tom Robinson and Boo Radley.

I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us and sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

The childlike innocence combined with the adult language of the narrator Scout who is recounting a story from her own childhood in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is something that without doubt appeals to readers of all ages, so I suggest if you haven’t read the book yet, it’s time to go pick up the 50th anniversary edition.