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Atticus Finch is a character in Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning fictional novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Atticus is a lawyer, resident of Maycomb County, Alabama, and the father of Jeremy "Jem" Finch and Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. Atticus is one of the central characters in the novel, arguably the single central character, although he is not the protagonist. Atticus is one of the most memorable and unique characters in American literature; in 2003 the AFI named him the #1 Greatest Hero in American Film, and in 2002, a "panel of 55 authors, literary agents, editor and actors" named him the 7th Greatest Character in Fiction since 1900.

Background

Atticus is the descendant of Simon Finch, a doctor from England who settled near Maycomb. Atticus, rather than stay in the family homestead (named "Finch's landing") went to Montgomery to study law and became elected to the state legislature. There he met and married the future mother of Jem and Scout Finch (who is never named, although it is mentioned that she was fifteen years younger than him), who dies of a heart attack two years after Scout, the younger child, is born. At the start of the novel, Atticus lives in Maycomb with his two children and his maid, Calpurnia.

Plot

Atticus undoubtedly is the book's most upright character, representing the moral ideal of both a lawyer and a human being: he is brually honest, highly moral, a tireless crusader for good causes (even hopeless ones), a pacifist and, for the most part, devoid of any of the racial or class prejudices afflicting the other citizens of Maycomb. He goes to great pains to instruct his children on the importance of being open-minded, judicious, generous neighbors and citizens. He is eventually revealed to be an expert shooter, but he had chosen to keep this fact hidden from his children so that they would not in way think of him as a man of violence. Physically, he is described throughout the novel as a tall, middle-aged man with glasses to correct his failing eyesight, and hair slightly greying at the temples.

The novel centers around (from the prespective of his daughter, Scout Finch) Atticus' struggle to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, convicted for the rape of a white woman, Mayelle Ewell. Despite the fact the strong evidence suggesting that Tom is innocent, most of the town takes the side against Atticus simply because his defendant is a black man and the plaintiff is a white woman. Hence, Atticus, his cildren and his family continually face slander, insults, and sometimes even threats of physical violence from fellow town citizens, schoolmates of Jem and Scout, and even other members of the Finch family. Despite all this, Atticus refuses to abandon the case, and continues to urge Jem and Scout to remain unresponsive to the town's criticism, fearful that they may learn the wrong ethical lessons. Atticus shrugs of all predjuces and insults, forgiving the townspeople for their failings, and continues to work for Tom's acquittal, taking the release of the innocent man as a personal crusade.

Notes on the Character

Just as the entire book is semi-autobiographical, Atticus Finch was based on Harper Lee’s father Amasa Coleman Lee, although the name “Finch” presumably came from her mother, Frances Finch Lee.

In the film adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch was played by Gregory Peck. Lee became good friends with Peck and even gave him her father’s watch, which he used in the famous courtroom scene. For his performance, Peck received the Academy Award for Best Actor, and was voted in 2003 by the American Film Institute to be the #1 Greatest Hero of American film, beating out such famous film heroes as Indiana Jones, Superman, Ghandi (film), Tarzan, James Bond and Robin Hood. Peck, a civil rights activist who favored the role of Finch over all his other roles, had this to say about his performance:

“I put everything I had into it – all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.”

Quotes from the novel

• "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 get into his skin and walk around in it." -Chapter 3

• (on being asked why he is defending Tom Robinson is the entire town is aginst it) "For a number of reasons. The main one is, if I didn't I couldn't hold my head up in town, I couldn't represent this country in the legislature, I couldn't even tell you and Jem not to do something again." -Chapter 9

• "Scout, simply by the nature of his work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one's mine, I guess. You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change... it's a good one, even if it does resist learning." -Chapter 9

• "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us to try not to win." -Chapter 9

• (after being called a "Negro-lover" by a heckler') "I certainly am... I do my best to love everybody." -Chapter 11

• " 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." -Chapter 11

• "Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious--because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe--some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others--some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal--there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system--that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review the evidence without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty." -Chapter 20

-"As you get older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it--whatever a white man does to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, of how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." -Chapter 23

• (When asked if it's all right to hate Hitler) "It is not. It's not okay to hate anybody." -Chapter 26

• "Sometimes I think I'm a total failure of a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him... if I connived at something like this, frankly, I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got." -Chapter 30

• (On being told by Scout that Boo Radley turned out to be nice, after all) "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them." -Chapter 31