“They don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (Lee 119). This quote shows why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. The mockingbird is a central idea shown by characters throughout the book, here’s why…
The book is set in the small town of Maycomb, where there are a lot of prejudice and mean people. Many events happen throughout the book and a lot of them show characters as people who don’t do anything wrong but still get some kind of negativity towards them. The mockingbird idea is shown by Tom, Boo, and Atticus. Tom is one of the characters that represent the mockingbird. Tom helps Mayella do all kinds of jobs with no pay because he just wants to be kind, like how a mockingbird does nothing but sing. Tom is still found guilty because of his skin color and because the jury are prejudice. Then he goes to jail and eventually is killed even though he did nothing. This reflects a lot about what is said about how it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. Atticus says that , “We all know men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe” (Lee 274).
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The whole town judges him even though they don’t know him or have met him. Without realizing it, the kids have been trying to kill that mockingbird. They have built up a view of Boo based on false information. This is similar to the racism evident in the rest of the town: a judgement made before knowledge. He watched out for the kids and gives them things in the tree, which in his way is like the singing of the mockingbird. Boo’s identification as the mockingbird becomes most clear at the end. When Atticus asks Scout if she understands why they will say Bob Ewell fell on his own knife, Scout says that is they did it any other way, "Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it? (Lee