Character Sketch of Atticus Finch from "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

"Ideals are like stars, we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our courses by them." This quote taken from Carl Schurz sums up a large portion of man's travel down life's path. Most of us spend the majority of our lives pursuing goals but few ever reach the climax of their planned accomplishment. A man's struggle to reach his person ideal is accounted in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Alabamian author Harper Lee, through a series of events circling a court case. A social drama set in the rural county of Maycomb, Alabama, relates the events surrounding a dark trial from a young girl's standpoint. The defendant, a black man wrongly accused of the raping and beating of a white woman, was not the only one put on trial; also being tried by Maycombian society is Atticus Finch, the Negro's lawyer. …