Why did this just become one of my favourite books of all time?! I LOVE Herman Melville. If someone like Dostoevsky was named as the author of this text, I’m sure it would be highly acclaimed as having a profound philosophical meaning. Melville has a vast and wonderful vocabulary and he uses it perfectly every time. I love the passage on pity:

“To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.

What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.”

Goated author and goated book. Give me more Melville!

A good read once you settle into its rhythm and the whole Court case event comes about but it all felt a bit abrupt. I felt characters were introduced quickly through choppy dialogue and we were never really well acquainted with many people for the story to have any lasting impact? But I know it’s meant to be a child narration sorta feel. That being said I still enjoyed it and I love Atticus’s character and almost stoic vibe, him and a few quotes by him within the book are probably the only things that will remain in my memory for a while.