Although most of To Kill a
Mockingbird is purely fictional, Harper Lee did base several of the
characters on people she knew in real life. Atticus is created as a model of her own
lawyer father, Amasa Coleman Lee; like Atticus, he also served in the Alabama state
legislature (1926-1938). The character of Dill is famously adapted from her own
childhood friend, Truman Persons, who visited Monroeville, Alabama each summer; like
Dill, he lived next door to Scout. He eventually changed his name to Truman Capote and
became a renowned author in his own right. Capote relates that he recognized Lee's
character of Boo Radley as a Monroeville man who
... used to leave things in the trees... He was a
real man, and he lived just down the road from us. We used to go and get those things
out of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is absolutely
true.
Scout is based on
Harper Lee herself--the daughter of an attorney and a notorious tomboy. Like her father,
Lee considered becoming an attorney, and eventually left law school just short of a
degree. Like Atticus, Harper attended the University of Alabama. Lee no doubt decided
upon the names Finch and Cunningham after her own mother's name: Frances Cunningham
Finch Lee. The town of Maycomb is based on her home town of
Monroeville.
Lee has always declared that her novel was not
autobiographical, but she has had little else to say on the subject over the years,
always remaining tight-lipped about the novel and refusing interviews for
decades.
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