Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

I think I’m beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time... it’s because he wants to stay inside.'' This is the first step Jem and Scout take to understand Boo, as Jem realizes that, with all the hate going around in Maycomb, maybe Boo just wants to stay inside, away from society. From now on, the kids become less preoccupied with Boo as their, and the reader’s, perception of him changes. While Boo is still an other, he is no longer a monster and is now more of a mockingbird, an innocent neighbor trying to stay inside, away from the hate Jem and Scout are currently experiencing in

Boo Radley is a ‘malevolent phantom’ and a character that has been shaped by gossips and sustained by children’s imaginations. “Stephanie Crawford, a neighbourhood scold… said she woke up in the middle of the night and saw him looking straight through the window at her.” This dialogue is an example of the gossips and how the legend of Boo Radley developed, lies that persecute his innocence. Setting is used to develop Boo’s surroundings and to summon an eerie atmosphere giving Maycomb reason enough to reject and victimise him for being different. “…rain rotten shingles drooped… oak trees kept the sun away and the remains of a picket fence drunkenly guarded the front yard.” The Radley house has been established as a neglected, out of place and isolated home through Harper Lee’s use of connotative words. This evokes within the reader the same view of Boo as the rest of the town and allows us to understand where the misunderstanding comes from before we

Everyone in Maycomb believes that the Radleys are dangerous and no one dares to really talk to them. They don’t follow the unwritten social rules that everyone else follows, and that is weird and mysterious to people. The community is mostly suspicious of Arthur Radley, also known as Boo Radley. People believe he is hostile because when he was a teen, he got in with the wrong crow and was arrested. Fifteen years later, he had another incident.

Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is set in a small, southern town, Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The story is told through the eyes of a girl named Scout about her father, Atticus, an attorney who strives to prove the innocence of a black man named Tom Robinson, who was accused of rape and Boo Radley, an enigmatic neighbor who saves Scout and her brother Jem from being killed. Atticus does his job in proving there was no way that Tom Robinson was guilty during his trial, but despite Tom Robinson’s obvious innocence, he is convicted of rape as it is his word against a white woman’s. Believing a “black man’s word” seemed absurd as segregation was a very integrated part of life in the south. The social hierarchy must be maintained at all costs and if something in the system should testify the innocence of a black man against a white woman’s word and win then what might happen next? Along with the prejudice amongst blacks and whites, the story also showed how people could be misunderstood for who they truly are such as Boo Radley. Without ever seeing Boo, Jem and the townsfolk made wild assumptions on what Boo does or looks like. Even so, while “To Kill a Mockingbird” shows the ugliness that can come from judging others, its ultimate message is that great good can result when one defers judgement until considering things from another person’s view. Walter Cunningham, Mrs. Dubose, and Boo Radley are all examples of how looking at things

Based on the first six chapter of the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, we can see that it moves at a rapid pace. It starts off as the beginning of summer and by the end of the sixth chapter an entire year has passed by. Throughout this year, we see Scout 's, Dill 's, and Jem 's adventures during the summers and Scout going to school for the first time. We also receive some additional background information on the mysterious Arthur "Boo" Radley.

The town of Maycomb has created a horrible label for him because of his parents and social issues. Many people think as Jem, Scout and Dill that, “judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels he could catch, that’s why his hands were bloodstained (...) 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” (16) all because of the stories they heard around. Boo Radley shows the theme of coexistence of good and evil, because no one knew who he was so they made up horrible rumours by pure ignorance although he is nothing of a monster as people describe. He turns out to be a protective, shy and caring person at the end of the book protecting Jem and Scout from Bob

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

Here, it shows that since the kids never saw Boo, he must be locked up and is not able to come outside. Another reason the kids think he is locked up is because the doors of the Radley place are always closed. The text says, “The doors of the Radley house were closed on weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr. Radley’s boy was not seen again for fifteen years” (Lee 13). This shows, Boo is locked up because their doors were closed so no one would see that Boo was locked up, and he was not seen again. The third reason the kids think he is locked up is because he never came out of the house when Mr. Radley died. Instead, his older brother returned most likely to keep Boo locked up in the house. Boo’s older brother would not have come home if it were not for having to keep an eye on him. Next, the kids are scared. The first reason they are scared is because they say the Radley pecans that fall in the schoolyard will kill you if you eat them. The book says, “...but the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you” (Lee 11). Here, it shows that they did not even touch the nuts, because they were so scared of anything that had to do with the Radley’s. One other reason they are scared is because

Fear of the unknown prompts Maycomb society to fabricate false rumors about Boo Radley and by doing so, isolate him as an outcast. The Radley family is different from the other families in Maycomb society as they do not follow the accepted traditions of the townspeople: “The Radleys...kept to themselves, a predilection unforgivable in Maycomb...The shutters and doors of the Radley house were always closed on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb ways” (9). By describing the Radleys as “alien”, Lee reveals the extent to which the family is unknown to Maycomb. Since their customs are unusual of a Maycomb family, they are distanced from the rest of society, thus making them even more mysterious and alien to the townspeople. However, this is just the beginning for a string of unexplainable and incomprehensible actions concerning the Radleys. After an incident with the law, the son Arthur Radley “was not seen again for fifteen years” until one day he “drove his scissors into his parent’s leg…[and] Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all”, a rumor spread by the town gossip (10-11). The first event scares the townspeople as they cannot understand why a person would associate with bad influences and commit such acts of violence in disregard of the law. Also, being locked

Does Maycomb lack an understanding toward Boo? Most people in this world are misunderstood. Children and adults can be treated as misfits because of their sexuality, race, or just by their interests. Understanding a person is not simple, but it's vital for good relationships and success in life. If someone doesn't try to put themselves in another person's else's shoes, they will never understand them or see how they feel.

Boo just sat there in the wake of cutting his dad. He didn't apologize or feel regret for his activities.Boo Radley disconnects himself from the general population of Maycomb. Boo remains inside his home throughout the day and no one ever observes him. After some issue with the law, "Mr. Radley's kid was not seen again for fifteen years"(10). In the event that Boo goes outside, he will be unjustifiably seen as a guest because of his secretive ways. Boo remains inside his home since he realizes that his general public will mock him. Boo has lost his fundamental social aptitudes and won't go outside of his home. Boo is known of gossip and is seen as the towns scary figure. The town theorizes what he does inside his home. Individuals think that Boo "went out around evening time when the moon was down, and peeped in windows... any stealthy little violations submitted in Maycomb were his work"(9). The town would fault or denounce Boo for any little wrongdoing or unexplained marvel. Kids guess and also the grown-ups. Jem hypothesizes to Dill "Boo was around six and a half feet tall, ... there was a since quite a while ago rough scar that kept running over his face;

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’.

I think that the kids will not meet Boo Radley. He is locked up in the courthouse basement. My first point to support that he is locked up is that hardly anybody in the entire city of Maycomb has seen him. In the book, Jem and Scout said that Boo existed, but nobody has ever seen him for the 15+ years that Boo has been alive. The only time people thought they saw him was at night, when he was looking through people's windows.

The text type of To Kill a Mockingbird is a fiction novel which deals with the racism the author observed as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Harper Lee, who wrote her novel in a retrospective point of view. There were numerous aspects of historical, personal, cultural and social context in To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee was born on the 28th of April, 1926, in Monroeville Alabama. Monroeville was a close-knit community that has many similarities with Maycomb, which is the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s father was a prominent lawyer, whom she drew inspiration for the protagonists father, Atticus Finch. Among Lee’s childhood friends was Truman Capote, from whom she drew inspiration to the character Dill. These personal details help portray Harper Lee’s own childhood home, where racism and segregation was highly evident. Another example of context which helped shape To Kill a Mockingbird were the events that occurred during Harper Lee’s childhood. In 1931, when Harper Lee was five years old, nine African-American men were accused of raping two white women near Scottsboro, Alabama. After a series of lengthy, highly publicised, and often bitter trials, five of the nine men were sentenced to long term imprisonment. Many prominent lawyers and various members of the general public saw the sentences as spurious and believed that it was motivated by racial prejudice.