Themes In To Kill A Mockingbird

The book, To Kill a Mockingbird, is an American classic and has been a staple in high schools for many years. The main storyline that this novel follows is of Scout, a young girl, living in the sleepy town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. It follows the case of Tom Robinson, an African American man, and how he was accused and convicted of rape. In prison, Tom was shot and killed because he was said to have tried to escape. While Mayella is the one who is saying that Tom raped her, the real person who should be to blame is her abusive father. As is quite apparent, Bob Ewell is the person who is most responsible for the death of Tom Robinson.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a book that a reader can turn again and again, gaining new insights and knowledge into life each time. Sometimes an author uses a motif- a frequently repeated incident or idea -to get a certain theme across to the reader. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee uses motifs to clarify her messages or insights about life. Three specific motifs that Lee uses throughout the whole story are the mockingbird, courage, and walking in someone else's shoes.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a multi-faceted novel which explores the principles and morals of people in the South during the 1930s. Mockingbirds are symbolic of the people that society abuse. Lee narrates the events of the novel using Scout’s voice and uses this technique to add emotional context and develop themes. Themes of racial and classist prejudice are developed by Lee to challenge the reader. These techniques are all powerful ways to alter the views of the reader.

A single story is a limited viewpoint. A single story reduces cultures and people into a simple stereotype.

Tom Robinson, an innocent man was shot in prison after he was wrongly convicted and falsely accused in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. This action, along with others is found commonly throughout the book as defenceless characters get hurt and wrongly judged despite their innocent persona. Along with Tom Robinson other characters suffer too, people such as Boo Radley and Atticus Finch suffer from the cruel world around them. In the surrounding chaos, those few characters manage to preserve their innocent nature.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a novel that deals with racial tensions in the 1930s and how the kids of a white lawyer deal with the prejudice and racism in their small Deep Southern town as he defends a black man wrongly accused of rape. Through the painful summer in which the case is prosecuted, Jem and Scout both mature, each in different ways. One of the characters that helps Scout to mature in particular is Boo Radley, the town’s reclusive, ghost-like phantom that all the children are scared of. Boo helps Scout to mature both directly and indirectly, both through his presence and his actions. Throughout the story, Scout hears a lot of gossip about Boo Radley, and she thinks of him as an intimidating nocturnal creature. However, there are several events that help Scout to fully understand that Boo, and and every person, is not what he seems, therefore helping her to mature.

In the taletelling community of Maycomb, in south Alabama during the 1930s, a compassionate man is misjudged and treated unkindly because rumors spread about him portraying him as insane and dangerous. Boo Radley, a character from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, is a shy man with an unfortunate past, who stays in his home all day due to the hurtful lies his neighbors tell. Two young children, Jean Louise “Scout” and Jem Finch believe the neighborhood gossip, and stay far away from Boo Radley, but after a turn of events they begin to see the real Boo Radley and realize that he is not the monster others portray him as. The children appreciate Boo Radley’s generosity towards them, and they change their opinion of Boo and the

Tom Robinson is an African American who is symbolic in this novel for the test of racism in the town of Maycomb. Tom is accused for an attack of Mayella Ewell and is seen as a typical black man, but it turns out that he is very kind and gentle. This trial of Tom Robinson affects Jem more than any other young child. He knew that this man was innocent, but “Jem, moving into adulthood, also feels Tom’s despair” (Bruell, page 45) He feels this every time the jury announced him guilty and felt as if there was another stab at Tom. “You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that—you can’t.” (Lee, page). Jem feels that the evidence that was given was not convincing enough as he was on the side of Tom. There is no chance for Robinson in this situation as a black man in a primarily white town attacks a white woman. Jem feels that society is lost and ultimately Jem loses his faith in humanity and is “…marked forever by this experience” (Bruell, page 45). Boo Radley was accused of horrible things and Jem finally realizes the bravery of Boo and his reasons to stay inside his home. “Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. 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."(Bloom, page 32) Jem feels that Boo’s isolation is necessary and not a negative thing at all. Many would believe that Boo Radley exiling himself from society was

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee tells the story of the lives of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch and her brother, Jem, growing up in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. Their father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer defending a black man, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman. Throughout the book, Scout and Jem start to understand the world in more adult ways. The Tom Robinson trial allows the children to view the world with a much wider point of view. They start to notice and comprehend all of the problems of discrimination, prejudice, ignorance and hypocrisy in the Deep South of the 1930s.

To Kill a Mockingbird, a beautiful coming-of-age novel written by Harper Lee, follows the moral development of young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. At the beginning of the novel, Scout, her brother Jeremy Atticus “Jem” Finch, and their friend Charles Baker “Dill” Harris taunt their mysterious neighbor, Arthur “Boo” Radley. The story follows a Southern Gothic style, in which the monster is Boo Radley; the victims are Scout, Jem, and Dill; and the hero Atticus Finch. The children view Boo Radley as an insane madman who guiltlessly stabbed his father. However, their view of Radley begins to change once they receive gifts in the knothole of the Radley House tree.

For many years, Boo Radley has been a source of fascination for the children of the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. Scout and Jem Finch are siblings who live with their father, Atticus. Along with Dill, who visits his aunt in Maycomb every summer, Scout and Jem spend much of their time trying to catch a glimpse of Boo. Even though they often find evidence that Boo is around, they never catch sight of him. Along with their hunt for Boo, Scout and Jem are faced with harassment from their classmates at school. Their father is an attorney in their small town. He has taken on the case of a black man accused of raping a white woman. The prejudice attitudes of the townspeople make life uncomfortable for the Finch family in Harper Lee's classic

Harper Lee once wrote, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… …until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”(33) Now, even though the quote is from a work of fiction, and written as dialogue, the quote does not become any less accurate. Books and movies have this tendency to reflect real life and have themes that are true in the real and fictional worlds. Although the book To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and the award winning movie by the same title have their differences, they both share many common themes. To begin, both of the portrayals of the story demonstrated the common theme that one never truly understands a person until one sees the world from the other’s perspective.

Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, includes many themes. One main theme shown consistently in this book is treatment of the innocent, otherwise known as mockingbirds. Many innocent characters such as Scout and Jem, Tom Robinson, and Boo Radley, are treated unfairly. Bob Ewell attacks and almost kills Scout and Jem out of anger even though they were not the cause of it. Tom is falsely accused of a crime he did not commit because of his race and Bob’s unwillingness to own up to his mistakes. Boo, who everyone thinks is a killer and psychopath, is the town loner and no one tries to get to know him because they believe the rumors about him. All of these are examples of how many members of Maycomb County are unjustly treated.

Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are very diverse yet similar in some ways. Both men face prejudice and unfair judgments that are being thrown at them. Tom Robinson is accused of rape even though he did not commit the crime. He was easily targeted because he was a black male. He was only convicted because of his race. Boo Radley has many ridiculous rumors that are said about him. He is seen as a monster and as an overall bad person by the town of Maycomb because of these rumors. These men are both accused of being people they are not by others who do not even know them or their stories. Tom’s absence and way of dying showed that he was not meant to be treated the way he was during the trial. Miss Maudie states, “The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked white only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody…” (256). Miss Maudie is telling Aunt Alexandria that Atticus is basically representing the people who think that Tom should be treated fairly. This shows a turning point of the some of the Maycomb people. It is now revealed that there are others who think Tom was treated unfairly. Since everyone was afraid of Boo Radley and the Radley’s, everyone tried to stay away from their house as much as possible which was an effect to his absence in the community. Nobody knew the real him until the incident after the pageant. Scout realized that Boo Radley is not who she or other people think he is. Scout states, “Atticus was right. One

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee takes place in Maycomb, Alabama in 1903. This novel is basically a coming of age story for a young girl named Scout and her older brother named Jem. Who grows up in a time where racism is normal. They soon learn to stand up for what is right, just like their dad, Atticus.