Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is best known as a literary classic, telling the tale of a young girl named Jean Louise “Scout” Finch’s childhood in a southern Alabama town during the great depression. While the fate of a black male convicted of rape still looms in the synopsis. To Kill a Mockingbird the title of the novel, refers to a quote on page 119. Both said by Atticus Finch the town of Maycomb's lawyer and Miss Maudie his neighbor, “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”. As said by Miss Maudie “ Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. 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). The title of this novel isn’t only referencing this quote,

Tom Robinson is wrongfully convicted of rape and eventually killed in prison, whereas Boo Radley is killed emotionally because he is not accepted by society. Since it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a sin to kill innocent souls like Tom and Boo. When Scout tries to understand why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, Miss Maudie elucidates Atticus’s opinion more clearly by stating, “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy...They don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (103). Mockingbirds sing and make beautiful music; however they mimic the songs of other birds, so they are seen through others. Tom and Boo are like mockingbirds because they are subject to the perceptions of the people of Maycomb. The townspeople knew these characters based on what others said about them. Consequently, Tom and Boo do not have their own “song” and are portrayed by others’ views of them. The mockingbird emerges as a metaphor for the wrong in harming innocent and defenseless people.

In this novel, innocence is represented from all ages yet all still contribute to the mockingbird factor. Charles Baker “Dill” Harris doesn’t develop and mature throughout the story. In this way, he is seen as a mocking bird because he’s innocent by his childish actions. His childish actions flow throughout To Kill A Mockingbird and he never changes this lifestyle, because that’s all he knows how to do. An example of this is in the court scene when we wasn’t aware of what’s going on, “Dill leaned across me and asked Jem what Atticus was doing”(Lee 254). In this scene the children snuck into the courthouse to listen to Atticus defend Tom Robinson, and Dill is questioning what is happening in the court.This scene is an example of

Can you stand the sight of innocent people getting hurt everyday? In wars, bomb blasts, or even in local or personal issues. They are innocent people who do nothing but help us or they just don 't bother us, just like a mockingbird.…………………………. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Boo Radley and Tom Robinson could both be the symbolic “mockingbird”.

In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird innocence is spread throughout the novel. Innocence is connected to the mockingbird because they do nothing but sing. There are three examples of innocence within the novel; Boo Radley, Mayella Ewell, and Tom Robinson.

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the

In the book To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the theme is destroying innocence. In this novel, it describes how the main characters Jem, Atticus, Dill, Tom, and Mr. Raymond are known mockingbirds because of the innocents they’ve changed of their own  or destroyed of someone else’s. There are multiple events that support my opinion of the theme.

(page 90) Innocence is shown at the beginning of the book by Jem and Scout, because to them they lived in a perfect world that showed no evil. They are innocents who have been destroyed through contact with evil. The loss of innocence in a way is a coming of age. This happens by an experience in a child's life where they realize the world's darkness instead of only seeing the good side of it.

Tom can be contemplated as a mockingbird because he was an innocent man who was killed for doing nothing, which corresponds to the title of the book. For instance, in the book Miss Maudie said “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy” (P.119). This quote describes Tom Robinson because he never harmed or agitated anybody. Tom was always delightful to everyone he encountered and never did anything detrimental to anyone. Tom always went straight to work and back home every single day, not disturbing anybody. In addition, Atticus read an article that said “He likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children” (P.323). This quote shows how most people knew that Tom was innocent and killed for doing nothing and thus perfectly describing killing a mockingbird. To conclude, these are many ways to show how Tom Robinson was considered a mockingbird in the

In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird the most commonly identified theme is the loss or destruction of innocence. Innocence has a number of meanings and a lot of these are shown within the story. The main ones represented in the book are, the state, quality, or fact of being innocent of a crime or offense, lack of guile or corruption, having purity, and freedom from guilt or sin especially through lack of knowledge of evil. There are characters who include Jem and Scout, Tom Robinson, and Boo Radley who show their definition of innocence through the book. Each of these characters who has their innocence goes down a path where they lose it and they have to take on the world face to face.

The Art of Preserving Innocence In the real world and in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, people try many different ways to preserve one’s own innocence. One example of this is how in real life, parents do not allow their children to watch television or own their own cell phone. The children's innocence is preserved by doing this in a sense that not being able to watch television means you cannot see disastrous situations all around the world, like people dying, that younger audiences may not be used to.

What is innocence? Well, that's a question that often entails an arbitrary answer but the dictionary tells us that innocence is something along the lines of “pure, lack of corruption”. In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird Jem and Scout Finch play as symbols of innocence. At the start of the novel Jem and Scout, the 10 and 6 year old son and daughter of defense attorney Atticus Finch, are truly as pure as can be. As the novel progresses they have a fall from innocence after being exposed to true evil. We see the effect of this fall from innocence towards the end of the book when Jem and Scout face what was their worst fear, the sheltered Boo (Arthur) Radley, and go completely unaffected.

In “To Kill A Mockingbird” the mockingbird is more than just a little bird. It is a symbol of innocence. Mockingbirds are very innocent birds in which do no harm to the people around them. Throughout the story, many characters lose innocence and are harmed for no valid reason. Jem is affected by this the most.

main theme in the book “To Kill A Mockingbird”. The characters that display innocence are

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