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What Does Atticus Symbolize In To Kill A Mockingbird

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To Kill a Mockingbird Final Project In Lee's’ “To Kill a Mockingbird”, symbolism is a literary device where the author uses an object to stand for an idea. In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the mockingbird symbolises innocence. In the novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Harper Lee uses Atticus, Tom Robinson, and Arthur (Boo) Radley as human mockingbirds to contribute to the overall theme of innocence. First Lee uses Atticus as a mockingbird. Atticus is a non-racist lawyer who is the father of the narrator; other wise known as Scout; and Jem. Atticus is a mockingbird because he is a lawyer who is treated like crap because he defended a black man in court. Scout narrates, “According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was leaving the post office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on him and threatened to kill him.”(217) Yet Atticus’s response was to wipe the spit off his face and walk away. Mr. Ewell threatened him for defending Tom Robinson; a innocent black man who is charged with rape. Atticus is a helpful man who was defending a man who just so happen to be black; then he’s treated like crap for it. That's why Atticus is a mockingbird. …show more content…

Tom Robinson is a black man with a wife and three kids. He also lost the use of his left arm when he was a boy. He got his arm caught in a cotton gin. He was charged with rape and was “proven” guilty. Tom went to jail where he waited to go to a higher court it was also where he was killed. Atticus explains, “They shot him… 17 bullet holes in him.”(235) Tom is a mockingbird because he was killed for something he didn't do. Tom couldn't defend himself, it only takes 1 bullet to kill someone. After the first shot they shot him 16 more times after he was already dead. He wasn't killed because he was on trial for rape, he was killed for being

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Mockingbird, a southern novel, Harper Lee uses the characterization of Atticus and Boo Radley. Lee also uses the symbolism of the mockingbird in her book. Both the characters and the symbolism show that innocence should be defended rather than attacked. To begin with, Atticus develops the theme by defending his children from racism and, also, defending Tom in court despite all the struggles.

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To show, Atticus explains to his son Jem that the justice system is broken and favor white people no matter how strong of a case he could make, “There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn't be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those are the facts of life.” (Lee, Chapter 23). Atticus has experience with these cases before because of his job and he knows how it all works, no matter what he does, nothing he could do would help him win if he was defending a black person.

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In the book To Kill a Mockingbird the author, Harper Lee, uses the character of Atticus to represent Moral and Truth. In many situations, Atticus's actions differ from the rest of the prejudice society of the 1930s south and represents how the south would change in the next 30 years. The reason why Atticus’s actions were unusual in this time period was because anyone who publicly challenged the system of segregation was in danger of being killed. When the book was written in the 1960s, many anti-segregation movements had happened since the 30s, changing laws and making it much more common for people to act out against segregation like Atticus. One major example of this was during Tom Robinson’s trial where Tom was convicted of a crime

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The title of To Kill a Mockingbird represents how Harper Lee feels about the Southern Society during the 1930s. She uses the term mockingbird to represent the innocent traits, and the loss of innocence that the characters face. In this novel Scout, Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson all have the traits and qualities of a mockingbird. We learn early in the novel that a mockingbird symbolizes innocence when Atticus says that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. Many of the events and actions that occurred, caused Scout to represent a mockingbird.

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1915 Words | 8 Pages

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