To Kill a Mockingbird Compare and Contrast

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Makenzi Niebergall 5th mod The Mockingbird and the Mountain To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Wish You Well by David Baldacci are two novels that are similar from the style in which they are written to the characters and settings within the stories. Wish You Well, a story Baldacci culled from his own family's history and experiences. It is a coming-of-age tale reminiscent of that timeless classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, where the setting, Virginia mountain coal country in the post-Depression '40s, is as much a character as any of the people who walk the pages. These two stories are classics; however they also have their differences. Both novels are a great read and you can easily pick out the similarities between the two. There are many examples of similarities in the novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Wish You Well. One of the well-known scenes in Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is the courtroom and trial scene. Baldacci’s novel also contains a courtroom and trial scene. In Wish You Well, Cotton Longfellow, who is similar to Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird, is Louisa Mae Cardinals lawyer. Longfellow is helping Louisa fight to keep her land in her family instead of having to sell it to Southern Valley Coal and Gas. The court scene is lively, quick and descriptive and you can easily picture it happening. Atticus lost his case in To Kill a Mockingbird and the same happened in Baldacci’s novel. However, in Wish You Well a miracle happened and they were able to appeal unlike Lee’s novel. Another similarity between the two novels is the father figures. In Baldacci’s Wish You Well, Lou and Oz’s father died in a terrible car accident in the beginning of the novel. They are then forced to move to the mountains with their great grandmother Louisa Mae. There the two children meet Louisa’s lawyer, Cotton Longfellow, who grows to become very close to the children.

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