Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Read Online Free PDF

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    The exact phrasing of each concept is unimportant. What is important is that these concepts are grounded in the data itself; they are not imposed from above by the person who interprets the data. A concept that contains multiple incidents across multiple answers is a good candidate for promotion to the status of “emerging theme”; emerging themes are statements of the central topics, concerns, and approaches of the answers as a whole. Through this grounded theory approach to the Question & Answer postings, three emerging themes have been identified: Moral Character , Life Lessons , and Text and Context .
    An understanding of these three emerging themes has been refined through a process called “theoretical sampling.” Key words, phrases, and ideas related to each emerging theme (e.g., “good,” “right,” “innocent,” “evil,” “bad,” “wrong,” “guilty,” and names of specific characters in the novel for the emerging theme Moral Character) have been entered into text searches of the entire collection of postings (not the much smaller working sample) as an informal test of the generalizability of the conclusions about the sampled answers to the collection of answers as a whole. This theoretical sampling of the entire collection has also served as a means to explore the possibility of a wider range of ways in which teachers talk about Lee’s novel.
    Discussing Three Emerging Themes
    A simplified grounded theory approach to the Question & Answer postings on To Kill a Mockingbird reveals three emerging themes in the ways that teachers talk to students about the novel: Moral Character, Life Lessons, and Text and Context.
    Moral Character
    When talking to students about fictional characters in Lee’s novel, particularly when talking about Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell, the teachers frequently move from character analysis to explicit and implicit statements of morality. Describing the fictional characters in the novel becomes a way of talking about moral character in the world.
    One teacher calls Atticus Finch the “conscience” of Maycomb County and of the novel as a whole. In a second answer by the same teacher, also included in the working sample, Atticus is elevated above the other characters in the novel:
    Atticus’s empathetic nature stands above all others, and this genuinely honest and humanitarian aspect actually works to his disadvantage at times. . . . Atticus even tries to understand Bob Ewell after being spit upon: “Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility. So, if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take.”
    Other answers in the working sample that talk about the moral character of Atticus Finch and Bob Ewell offer a similar interpretation. One teacher, for example, contrasts Atticus’ “solid principles” and unchanging “sense of morality” with the “despicable” and “evil” nature of the other man. In their descriptions of the two characters, many of the answers outside of the working sample likewise reproduce this opposition of “the good” and “the evil,” as manifested in the two characters: Atticus Finch is “professional” and Bob Ewell is “low living,” the former “courageous” and the latter “cowardly,” the former “empathic” and the latter “hateful,” the former “defending” and the latter “threatening,” the former “not retaliate[ing]” and the latter “seek[ing] revenge,” and so forth. Eight answers outside the working sample liken Atticus Finch to the very centers or arbiters of moral values for many people today, the figure of Jesus Christ and the God of Christianity. Theoretical sampling shows no similar parallel between