What Does Tom Robinson Symbolize In To Kill A Mockingbird

In the book , To Kill A Mockingbird, symbolism is used a lot. One of the most important symbols throughout the book is the “mockingbird”. In chapter ten, Atticus tells Scout and Jem that they can not shoot mockingbirds, that it’s a sin. Mrs. Maudie says it’s a sin because , “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” He basically tells the kids that mockingbirds are harmless and they don’t do anything wrong , so there should be no reason to kill one. The “mockingbird” is a very important symbol in the book because it relates to actual characters in the book. I believe that the symbol in the story means that even if someone doing no harm to others can still somehow end up hurt , or even dead.

Tom Robinson is a black man who is on trial for the rape of Mayella Ewell. I think that he is an example of a mockingbird because in the book, all he was trying to do is help Mayella; but because he is a colored man , he wasn’t treated the same as a white man. So, even though all he was trying to do was be kind , he was found guilty; and while he was in prison, he was shot. He was an innocent man , shot. That is why Tom Robinson is an example of a “mockingbird”. Another example of a “mockingbird” in the book , is Boo Radley. Boo Radley was Jem and Scout’s mysterious neighbor. There were rumors going around about him that made him seem like a terrible person and Jem and Scout never even met him, but they let the rumors decided what kind of person Boo was. Jem described Boo Radley as , ”Six and a half feet tall, dined on raw quirrel and cat, hands were blood stained, long jagged scare across his face, yellow and missing teeth, bug eyed, drooled most of the time…” . So as you can tell from just the way they described him, they judged him without even knowing