To Kill a Mockingbird Final Essay In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses Boo Radley, Dolphus Raymond, and Mayella Ewell to show how they are isolated from the rest of society after they did something that was frowned upon in the town. Boo Radley stabbed his father, which resulted in him being locked in his house for 16 years. Dolphus Raymond had relations with a colored woman, which resulted in him being isolated from society. Mayella Ewell is part of a poor family that is disrespectful to the rest of the town so she is looked down on. If people do something that is considered wrong in a society, then they will be isolated and looked at differently which leads to people acting very differently from what is the norm in society …show more content…
He stabbed his father, which resulted in him being locked up in his house for 15 years and him being looked at as a scary person. As Scout and Jem were telling Dill about the story of the Radley family, Scout recalls, “As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.” (13). After stabbing his father, he “resumed his activities” which shows how his mood changes very quickly and how little he cared. As a result of the stabbing, his father locked him up in the house for 15 years. Scout’s story is based off of what Miss Stephanie said. When Jem and Scout were younger, they viewed Boo differently than when they were older. Boo has changed throughout the time that he had been locked up. He seemed to change his way and started to display acts of kindness. When Miss Maudie’s house is burning down, people rush to help her, including Atticus. Jem and Scout go to watch and end …show more content…
During the lunch that Walter was joining the Finch family, Scout talked about Burris Ewell and how he does not show up to class. When she asks Atticus why she has to go to school when he does not, “Atticus said the Ewells had been a disgrace of Maycomb for three generations.” (40). “Disgrace” shows how separated the Ewells are in the society. The Ewells are not viewed very highly and are part of the lower class in Maycomb. The family is described as a disgrace.When asked if she had any friends during the trial, “The witness frowned as if puzzled. ‘Friends?’” (245). She is very lonely and asks “Friends” because of the fact that she is an Ewell and is frowned upon making it harder to make friends. The whole town thinks the Ewells are bad, therefore they isolate them from the rest of society. Because of this, she lies about Tom Robinson raping her and ends up getting him
At the end of To Kill a Mockingbird Scout and Jem were almost brutally stabbed and suffocated by Bob Ewell. However, Boo came out of his house them. This took him so much courage as he was afraid of the world outside of his “prison”. His love for the children drove him to do this. Even though in the beginning he did a small bit of bad, he is truly a“mockingbird”. Boo was even referenced by Scout as a mockingbird after he saved Jem and her’s life by killing their attacker. When Boo’s actions were to be covered up, she stated, “Well it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird (by giving Boo undesired attention), wouldn’t it?” (Lee 370). Miss Maudie's quote morphed into describing Boo, just one of many ways it was seen in the book.
Boo Radley was an adult that was thought to believe that he stabbed his dad in the leg with scissors when he was a teenager. Scout, Jem, and Dill always feared him. The feared him so much, that they always cautioned whenever they crossed over to their house. They even made a dare that involved braveness and Boo Radley. ¨Well how'd you feel if you'd been shut up for a hundred years with nothin' but cats to eat?¨ But Boo isn’t is bad as he seems. First of all, it was uncertain, whether he actually stabbed his dad or not. Number 2, he’s been there for Scout. For example, he put the blanket around Scout, during the house fire of one of Scout’s neighbors. And how he saved Scout and Jem from
Boo is a very important character in the book, in fact, the novel opens with Scout and her interactions with Boo and is closed by it too. Scout learns about Boo though the gossip passed on through neighbors in the community. The stories are scary and many out of context, however, Scout doesn’t seem to notice this till after the trial. At the beginning of the book she plays a game that involves Boo, and she tries to torment him into coming out. When Scout describes Boo Radley she says, "People said 'Boo' Radley went out at night and peeped in people’s windows. That he breathed on flowers and they froze instantly. They said he committed little crimes in the night but not one ever saw him." This shows that Scout sees Boo as an object of fascination instead of a human being. She does not acknowledge that he has emotions or feelings, she just views him as a monster who does horrible things to people. Furthermore, we can learn that Boo is not a very loved or respected figure in the community due to his strange way of living. As the trial takes place Scout matures and her level of complex thinking increases, but it is not until October 24th that we see how her perception of Boo changes since in the trial she saw how badly they treated Tom Robinson and she directly connected it to Boo “I hugged him and said, “Yes, sir. Mr. Tate was right, it’d be sort of
The Ewells are stereotyped as dirty, trashy people by almost everyone that knows them/lives in Maycomb. "Atticus said that Ewells had been a disgrace to Maycomb for three generations. None of them had done an honest day of work in his recollection........ they were people but they lived like animals..... 'There are ways of keeping them in school by force, but it's silly to force people like the Ewells into a new environment.'"
His father said that he will watch him and make sure that he does not do anything bad. After a while Boo’s father had kept him locked up for about 15 years, and no one has ever seen him since he first got locked up. After that Boo started to go crazy, one day “Boo was sitting in the living room cutting some items from the Maycomb Tribune to paste into his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parents leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities” (To Kill A Mockingbird 13). He had gone crazy for just being locked up in his house for about 15 years. Boo will most likely end up being locked up into his house for about another 5 more years. In the ending I believe that the kids will not meet Boo because they are to scared of him and that he is still locked up in his
Scout, Jem, and Dill then discuss why Boo stays hidden. This is when Dill explained, “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to runoff too” (Lee 192). Dill suggest that Boo might have been through a l;ot and doesn’t have any loved ones to go to. We then realize Boo symbolizes innocence being destroyed because when he was little he has had no one to care for or love. One of the most memorable scenes is when Atticus and Heck Tate realize that Boo killed Bob Ewell. They discuss whether or not to expose him but Scout comes in and states “well, it’d be sort of like shootin a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” (Lee 370). Scout believes that by exposing Boo to the public after all these years of him locked in his house, it would be like killing an innocent mockingbird. At this moment Boo Radley officially becomes a mockingbird.
Scout, Jem, and Dill work many summers to try to get Boo to come out of the Radley house for the first time in many years. Jem had been told many things about Boo in his short years in Maycomb, and he tells his sister Scout about the ‘monster’, saying, “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—if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time” (chap. 1). Jem’s ideas about Boo are very biased toward rumors that can be heard around Maycomb. This shows how Maycomb’s people often judge before they know, seeing as no one has seen Boo Radley in over twenty years and people are prejudiced to believing the unknown is always bad. Prejudice and rumors can often not be trusted and Boo Radley is no exception. After Miss Maudie’s house catches fire and half the town rushes outside to watch it burn, Atticus tells Scout, “someday you should thank him for covering you up” then Scout asks, “Thank Who?” And gets a response from Atticus, “Boo Radley. You were too busy looking at the fire, you didn’t even notice when he put the blanket around you” (chap. 8). Boo Radley is not really a bad person, he
Throughout this journal, one can predict the kids will not meet Boo because he is locked up and they are scared of him. One reason why the kids will not meet Boo is because he is locked up. A reason to support this is because he stabbed his father with a pair of scissors. One quote from the book to give you a visualization is “As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities” (Lee 13). As you can see Boo can not think through his actions before doing them. He does not see that what he does deeply affects others around him. Next, another reason he is locked up is nobody sees a lot of activity coming in and out of the Radley household. Maycomb is a quiet
Boo Radley developed with his Almost unnoticeable interaction with Scout at the end of Chapter 8. Scout is watching Miss Maudie's house on fire and when atticus comes back he notices something. Scout is wrapped in a blanket that she didn't have when she left the house.Scout says that she stayed right where he told her to, in front of the Radley Place, but she and Jem saw Mr. Nathan fighting the fire. They Come to the conclusion that it must have been Boo who had put it on her. This would step up the interaction that boo had previously had with the children and now. This also contributes to the Children's Mystery regarding Boo Radley
At the beginning Scout thought Boo Radley was a scary old man who is chained up in his basement and eat squirrels. They heard stories like he was cutting a newspaper and ended up stabbing his father in the leg. Since then their friend Dill has been working with them to retrieve Boo from his home. Jem and Scout have been getting gifts from Boo in an oak tree knothole and they think that’s his way of communicating with them. But when Mr. Radley filled the hole with cement the children experienced another time with Boo when Mrs. Maudie's house was on fire and out of the blue Scout had a blanket around her that wasn’t there. Towards the end of the chapter, Jem and Scout found themselves in a hassle after walking home from the pageant. Jem got broke
Mr Radley was ashamed of his son’s behaviour when he got into the wrong crowd as a youngster and punished him by locking him up. There is a lot of gossip around Maycomb about Boo and people blame him for any bad things that happen in the neighbourhood, ‘Any stealthy crimes committed in Maycomb were his work.’ Jem turns him into a monster, ‘his hands were blood-stained’, and ‘his eyes popped’. At the end of the novel however, we find that Boo is misunderstood, and gossip of the town’s folk has made him up to be a ‘malevolent phantom’. Scout tells us he is timid, he had, ‘the voice of a child afraid of the dark’.
Boo is like a monster to Dill, Jem and Scout throughout the beginning of the novel although once the children see that he leaves them gifts inside a knothole in the tree in between their houses. He is only seen on one occasion in the novel, although he is talked about many times because Scout and Jem take an interest in him once they start to find out who he really is as a person. Boo Radley never really left his house even when he could simply because
To Kill A Mockingbird Essay In To Kill A Mockingbird, you may think sleepy Maycomb, Alabama in the South as a peaceful place, but no, racism, poverty, and domestic violence surround the town like uncontrollable fever. Many characters experience this in the book, but we’re going narrow it down to certain characters. Tom Robinson experiences racism in To Kill A Mockingbird, the Ewells family live in poverty, and Mayella Ewell has been in domestic violence once in the book.
Legend has it that the radley boy got into some legal trouble and mr radley made a deal with the law that no more trouble would be ever be caused from his son again. Ever since then the radley boy has never been seen for many years. But in all truth Boo Radley is a good hearted person, very timid and unsure of himself but he shows his kindness in the most discreet ways possible. The town at this time is very judgmental, that is one of the many lessons taught by Lee. To judge is not wise because it is easy to create misconceptions amongst themselves. If you are not of high moral standards you are looked heavily down upon thus can be seen through the towns view of the Radleys and the Cunninghams. The children Jem, Scout, Dill, are still at this point carless and without worry but that drastically changes when Atticus takes on Tom
did not allow anyone to visit him or have the slightest contact with him. Eventually Boo's mental state triggers him to stabbed his father with a pair of scissors. Boo's fathers causes Boo to suffer innocently by stealing his childhood experiences away from him. This indicates that Boo is a mockingbird because he did very little to deserve this torment and isolation that his father inflicted upon him. Then, Jem and Scout from the beginning of the story never fully understood Boo's past life at all, yet they judged him on things they hear about. They suspect he was basically an evil monster that never comes out of his house. Scout starts the stereotyping by creating a nickname “Boo” for the innocent Arthur Radley. This nickname robs Arthur of his true name and identity, causing him to suffer. Furthermore, Jem and Scout constantly pester Boo in an attempt to discover his actual identity. They tell their best friend Dill that Boo is like a zombie. Jem describes Boo as being: “About six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cat he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained-if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he and he drooled most of the time” (Lee 13). The stereotypical image created by Jem completely robs Boo