Unpopular opinion: The cover of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' tricked me for 10 years

2 comments

2 Comments

A buddy of mine had the same thing happen with this book cover that had a drawing of a little girl in a tree. He was dead certain it was a story about a kid who lived in a treehouse and had adventures, maybe like a modern Tom Sawyer thing. When he had to read it for class he kept waiting for the treehouse plot to kick in, just getting more and more confused. It wasn't until the end of the book that he finally realized the cover was just a nice picture and had nothing to do with the actual trial or the racism. How long did it take you to figure out what the book was really about?

barnes.shane1d ago

Hold on, I gotta push back on this one (sorry, not sorry). A cover is the first thing you see, and it's meant to set a tone or mood, not lie to you about the plot. If someone sees a little girl in a tree, maybe they're supposed to think about childhood and innocence, which is literally a huge part of the book's theme (Scout's whole naive viewpoint). The cover isn't a table of contents, it's just a piece of art meant to grab your eye and suggest the general vibe, not a step-by-step summary. Blaming the cover for tricking you is like blaming a movie poster for not showing you the whole three-act structure. I think the real issue is people expecting book covers to be literal, when they're more like a hint or a feeling (which is fine by me).