Innocent Quotes In To Kill A Mockingbird

¨ ‘Your father’s right,’ she said. ‘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. That’s why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ ” (Lee 119)

Maycomb, a place with positive and negative feelings, a place of racism, a place of innocence. This novel To Kill a Mockingbird shows us the society of racism. At this time, Maycomb was suffering the Great Depression. In addition, it gives us a families point of view. However, they’re the main characters, which is Atticus, Jem, and Scout. The two themes I’d like to point out are innocence and inequality.

Maycomb is on edge; the racial divide is as sharp as a knife. Despite having lived there for their entire lives, young Scout and Jem Finch are naive to the extent the racial dynamics influence their lives. They are like many other members of Maycomb, holding prejuicides about those among them, notably their neighbor Bob Radley and Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape. Boo is a legend, depicted to be a monster and the young children cannot resist the allure of trespassing his house. In many benevolent acts, Boo makes his presence indirectly felt, later intervening in a dangerous situation to protect Scout and Jem. Their dad, Atticus, embodies the moral of the story and his unique virtue acts as a guide in Scout and Jem’s maturity. He defends

Atticus's strong sense of morality and justice motivates him to defend Tom Robinson with determination, giving it all he has. He shows this when he says, "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try and win." (pg.82). He says this to Scout after she comes home from school angry at Cecil Jacobs for making fun of Atticus in the schoolyard. Atticus tells her to fight with her head instead of her fists. He wants the people of Maycomb to hear the truth about Tom, "That boy may go to the chair, but he's not going till the truth's told." (pg.159). Atticus is putting everything a man holds dear, dignity, respect, honor and status, on the line to protect Tom. He later shows more bravery when he goes to the jailhouse to

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

"Never be Afraid to Stand Up for what's Right." This statement is very powerful. Throughout the book To Kill a Mockingbird, this theme has been portrayed many times. Atticus is a main example for this theme. In every circumstance, or problem that he faced he fought for what was right, even if it was against the crowd. In the court room the setting of the theme was portrayed because Atticus was standing up for Tom and equality. Not only was he not afraid, he stood up for what was right even knowing he'd be called things like "a disgrace to the family" (chapter 13) and "a N- lover"(chapter 9). Throughout the plot we see Atticus standing up for what he believed in. Not only with Tom, but at the end of the book he even wanted to take

In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus is the “mockingbird” of the story in that he is “killed” when other people are against his harmless “singing”. This is so because he innocently read with Scout at night against Miss Caroline’s will, he clearly had the upper side of evidence in the Tom Robinson trial yet still lost, and he persisted Aunt Alexandra’s blatant request of firing Calpurnia in order for her to be the housekeeper. All three of these reasons help to prove that he indeed took on such a role in the plot.

In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee Atticus Finch said “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”(pg 119). This quote is important because of the message it gives which is innocence of certain people in the book. Some of the examples are when Jem and Scout start looking at things from different people’s point of view,when the mob left because of Scout ,and when Atticus told the court to do their job.

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.

Throughout To Kill A Mockingbird, Bob Ewell shows countless acts of controlling and intimidating Mayella. Involving Mayella’s life at home, there is reason to believe she is being abused by her father, especially while he is drunk. During a conversation between Mayella and Tom, Tom asks if Bob is good to Mayella, and she replies “He does tollable, ‘cept when-.” (Lee, Chapter 18). While she is finishing her statement, Bob was intimidating Mayella while waiting for her to answer, to express that she may not say anything to defame Bob. As Tom reviews his discussion with Mayella in the trial, he tells the court, “she says she never kissed a grown man before…. She says what her papa do to her don’t count.” (Lee, Chapter 19). In this context, interpreting this statement concludes that Bob has done inappropriate things to Mayella. Previously stated in the second paragraph above, Bob calls Mayella a whore for kissing Tom. Bob is portrayed as a racist person, so Mayella having any interaction with Tom will get her into more

In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, the atmosphere of discrimination normalizes the use of slurs, and the ostracization of certain members of the community, for the children in the novel. To Kill A Mockingbird, written in 1960, set in the fictitious town of Maycomb, Alabama. This novel, from the perspective of the character Scout, is a tale of identity, injustice, and inequality in a time of heavy discrimination. In Lee’s novel, the use of slurs is a common occurrence in the town of Maycomb. Scout, as well as the other children in the novel, are exposed to adults and their peers using these slurs, and, consequently, slurs become a desensitized part of everyday language. From the beginning of the novel, Boo Radley is an enigma to Scout,

Power is too overpowering sometimes especially for class, gender, and race. TKAM is a book written by Harper Lee in 1960. Mayella Ewell is a white, 19-year-old woman, who accused Tom Robinson, who is Negro, for rape. The book takes place in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s in the South during the Great Depression where there was a recession. Mayella is not a powerful character based on her class, gender, and race compared to Tom Robinson.

“she became what she was, a thick-bodied girl accustomed to strenuous labor” (page 239, Scout Finch) is how Scout describes Mayella. During her testimony, she says that Tom beat her and raped her. She said she invited Tom to come into her yard to help her chop up an old chiffarobe. She said she would pay him a nickel, but when she turned to face the house, Tom grabbed her and started strangling her. “and I turned around, and ’fore I knew it he was on me” (page 241, Mayella Ewell). She said she screamed, and the next thing she knew, her dad was standing over her, and then she blacked out. When Atticus starts asking her personal questions about her house and her dad getting drunk, she becomes scared and seems to soften up, like she’s going to admit something, but then she screams that Tom is most definitely

Atticus is a man with morals. When he sees a person, white or black in need of justice he is always there to help, no matter the cost. In Maycomb County when a black man is on trial he is automatically seen as guilty. When Atticus was chosen to defend Tom Robinson many of the people in the community took it upon themselves to pay him a visit. It was understood by everyone that Tom had no chance and some of the men in the county went to Atticus to see if he would drop the case. Atticus knows though that Tom is innocent and deserves to have a fair trial. “Link, that boy might go to the chair, but he’s not going until the truth’s told” (Lee 146) . Atticus demands justice no matter who it is or what they’ve been accused of. He understands what needs to be done to give those who have been wrongly accused an honest hearing.

When Atticus asks Mayella ‘who are your friends?’ (p.245) she is perplexed by the question demonstrating to us how she must be ‘the loneliest person in the world’ (p. 256). Furthermore, Lee clearly explains to us she is accustomed to being treated poorly as when Atticus refers to her as ‘ma’am’ and speaks to her politely she believes initially that he is ‘mockin’ me’ (p.243). Reflecting on how Mayella is trapped in her improvised, friendless state with nobody who respects her, we realise it would not have been difficult for her to become fixated on and fantasise about Tom Robinson, as he ‘was probably the only person who was ever decent to her’ (p.257). We are also able to understand why she lies about Tom raping her during the trial when we take into consideration that Mayella is living in fear of what her drunk and abusive father, Bob Ewell, would do to her if she was truthful. As she has already been ‘beaten savagely’ (p.272) and possibly raped by her father, after she ‘kissed a black man’ (p.272), her trepidation is unsurprising. By climbing into Mayella’s skin and walking around in it we see Lee is helping us to learn the importance of considering people’s circumstances before judging their actions.