Innocence and the Mockingbird The mockingbird is a very important symbol in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. In the novel, Jem and Scout are raised by a single father, Atticus, who is also a lawyer. Atticus is given the job of defending a black man, Tom Robinson, in court. Tom is clearly innocent, but because of racial prejudice during the Great Depression, he is proven guilty. Also, Boo Radley, the neighbor of Jem and Scout, kills Bob Ewell, the man who tried to attack Jem and Scout.
Scout gave in to the lie that, “Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work” (Lee 10). In result of Boo’s low social development, many people did not know what he was like, and just assumed that he was evil. The residents of Maycomb all knew each other very profoundly; however, Boo Radley was the most unknown man to the population. He and his family were blamed for almost every wrong thing that occurred in the town. Scout Finch observes that Boo Radley had been extremely generous to his fellow neighbors, but the Finches never paid him back, “We never put back into the tree what we took out of it; we had given him nothing, and it made me sad” (Lee 373).
Radley kept him chained to a bed most time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts” (14). Scout believes that the Radley family is evil because of the rumors that she heard about the Radleys chaining Boo to his bed, but Atticus believes differently because there are other reasons to why nobody sees Boo Radley. At the end of the book when Scout dropped Boo Radley off at his house she thought, “He gently released my hand, opened the door, went inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again… Boo was our neighbor.
Arthur “Boo” Radley is a seemingly minor but subtly impactful character in Lee’s book. According to rumor, he joined a gang, was convicted of some relatively minor crime, and was supposed to be sent to a state boarding school, but his father refused. Boo once, while cutting up newspapers, stabbed his mother in the leg with scissors and continued calmly scanning the papers. His father convinced a judge not to send Boo to an asylum, so he was kept in his house, never seen again by the community, and became the source of horror stories for children. The flames of gossip are, as usual, fueled thoroughly by Miss Stephanie Crawford and tend to be ridiculously twisted: “Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained” (16).
Based on what is shown, they learn that even police officers, like Heck Tate, are stereotypes. Along with this plot, Scout hears rumors about a boy named Boo Radley. Boo Radley is a boy who has been talked about since he has never come out of his house. People are quick to judge and are influenced by others’ thoughts and feelings about another’s appearance. Looks are deceiving to the people in Maycomb County.
Boo Radley represents a symbolic mockingbird because he was seen as a psychopath who lives alone, even though he ended up becoming a distant father figure to Jem and Scout. First, Boo becomes recognized by the kids as a perpetrator, and a man with blood on his hands. He has been reputed to have stabbed his father in the leg with scissors. Boo was only imagined this way. One night when Jem and Scout were fastly walking home, Bob Ewell, the nearby resident who drinks too much, tries to kill the kids.
Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work." For the children, Boo Ridley became a legend about a terrifying monster that never left house. They conversed among themselves about the "monster",and the two boys even acted out Boo 's untrue history. They 've heard simply untrue rumors about Boo Radley, just like how I heard rumors about Mr. Cash. However, as they grew older and the story progressed towards the trial, Boo Radley was no longer on the minds of the children.
Killing a mockingbird is a sin in many cultures because of the animal’s innocent nature; in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird she immaculately illustrates this. To Kill a Mockingbird is about the Finch family, which consists of: Scout (Jean), Atticus, Calpurnia, and Aunt Alexandra. They reside in the modest town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s. The father of the family, Atticus, is defending a colored person, Tom Robinson, in a court case regarding rape. In turn, this affects Atticus’ children, Scout and Jem, negatively.
Another character who values modesty is Miss Maudie Atkinson, their neighbor across the street. After Atticus had shot the dog, Jem was all butthurt that he did not know anything about it. While they were at Maudie’s, Jem and Scout were going on and on about how he could not believe that Atticus could actually do something like that. With this, Miss Maudie simply replies with, “‘People in their right minds never take pride in their talents’” (Lee 130). With this, readers can see that Miss Maudie values modesty because
The story is about how his kids, Jem and Scout, live during this time, and everything Atticus does to fight for Tom. In all adaptations, there are differences between a book and its movie, and in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird, which was directed by Robert Mulligan, many crucial scenes are left out. Jem, Scout, and Dill, a friend of theirs, meet a man named Dolphus Raymond outside of the courthouse. In Maycomb County, Dolphus was not considered a normal man, for he was a white man who had a black wife and mixed children. He even had to pretend to be drunk most of the time, just so people could have a reason for his actions.