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Boo Radley Symbolism In To Kill A Mockingbird

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The book To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is an elementary aged girl who must battle concepts like prejudice and racism in her home town; Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s. Harper Lee uses symbolism and character throughout the story with characters like Boo Radley, her motif, and the character from whom the books point of view is written, Scout, to convey the message that you must consider things from another person’s point of view to fight prejudice. Harper Lee’s character Boo Radley is often misunderstood and serves as a gate way to understanding prejudice for Scout. Boo Radley had gotten into the wrong crowd as a kid and got mixed up with the law. The others who got in trouble with him were sent to industrial school, a type of special school that really only serves to provide children with food, shelter, and education (pg 12). Boo Radley on the other hand, was not. Instead, he was shut inside of his house mysteriously for 15 years (pg 13). This …show more content…

An instance of this occurs when Scout started schooling she could already read, much to the distaste of her teacher. She feels guilty and upset over being told that she must stop reading, and she doesn’t understand why she is being told to do so (pg 23). This is an example of Scouts character, in that she doesn’t often consider the “why” to situations. Atticus teaches Scout an important lesson to understand where people are coming from so that she may learn “why” things are presented the way they are, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (pg 39). As it is Scout does not consider things from others point of view, and she doesn’t understand their motives as Atticus would like her to, and it is extremely detrimental to her

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