To Kill A Mockingbird Analysis

The intriguing novel, To Kill A Mockingbird is written by the prestigious author Harper Lee. Lee has utilised the lifestyle and attitudes towards ‘African-Americans" in the 1930's to create a novel which presents the reader with Lee's attitudes and values. The dominant reading of the novel is focused on the issues of racial prejudice, but there are also a number of other alternative and oppositional readings. Examples of this are the Marxist and feminist readings which can be applied to the text.

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

The ambition of oneself to pursue justice and righteousness may result in prosecution. In the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, and movie "A Time to Kill" by Joel Schumacher, each demonstrate one’s open-mindedness and forward thinking leads to penalization through protagonists Atticus Finch and Jake Brigance. Both egalitarians take the position as an attorney for an African American and are prosecuted in the process.

In the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird”, there was a very unique, distinct, and important character; Arthur Radley, also known as Boo Radley. Arthur Radley has a very suspicious and unique past and way of living, which brought up a lot of different opinions and theories; especially when it came to Jean Louise Finch, Jeremy Finch, and Dill Harris. In this essay, you will be read about the progression of the different theories and rumours that were made about Arthur Radley.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, there are several characters that appear to be alienated from society, but Arthur “Boo” Radley is the most important to the plot because he causes mystery and curiosity for Jem and Scout throughout most of the book, but the mystery is solved by the end of the book. Boo Radley was, according to the book, as very pale and sick looking with his clothes in very poor condition.

Boo Radley is labeled an outcast and an outsider by the society of Maycomb because of the rumors and myths that have surrounded him through the years of being confined to his brother’s home. For over twenty-five years, Boo Radley has been restricted to the indoor limits of the Radley house suppressing him further from the Maycomb community. Arthur “Boo” Radley was a troublesome child who sadly continued to make wrong choices once he became

“It's right hard to say," she said. "Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks' talk at home it'd be out of place, wouldn't it? Now what if I talked white-folks' talk at church, and with my neighbors? They'd think I was puttin' on airs to beat Moses, "But Cal, you know better," I said. “It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike—in the second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do. It aggravates 'em. You're not gonna change

In our culture we place people in boxes, and attach stereotypes to different types of people. It is difficult to break free from the conventional ways of our pasts. In the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee a character defines the way we as a society view stereotypes. Boo Radley is an important character in To Kill a Mockingbird yet the only time we have actually witnessed him is the very last scene of the book. Readers only hear town gossip, and see small kindnesses from him in the form of trinkets hidden in trees.

Arthur Radley is a representation of the mockingbird. [insert some background info here.] Miss Maudie remarks, “‘That is a sad house.’... ‘The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens behind closed doors, what secrets—’” (Lee 46) This quote implies that Boo Radley might have been abused by his father. It reveals that Arthur Radley was a kid, who lost his innocence and normal childhood because of the isolation and abuse imposed on him by his father. “According to Miss Stephanie, … Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants and resumed his activities.” (Lee 11)

Arthur “Boo” Radley is the neighbor of the Finches, he tends to stay inside and enjoys the seclusion he has, but due to this, rumors arise. There are stories of Boo going mad, how he sneaks out of his home at night and looks in people’s windows. Scout tells this to her neighbor, Ms. Maudie, who responds with an amused “Stephanie Crawford even told me she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up for a while,” (60). Despite these rumors, Ms. Maudie saves the day and kindly tells Scout of how she remembers Arthur as a young boy, kind and polite as can be. Stephanie, the town gossip would have obviously

On the Finch family's street lives a man called Arthur “Boo” Radley. The whole town fears him and thinks of him as a sort of bogeyman. His bad reputation began when he was in his teen years. He mingled with the Cunningham family and

The pages of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird are filled with many lessons. Throughout the book we follow “Scout” Finch as she navigates young life and learns from the people around her. One of these people is Arthur “Boo” Radley: a man known only through the stories told by his neighbourhood as he never leaves his home. Scout’s view of Boo changes drastically though out the novel as her understanding of him develops. Originally, Scouts view was skewed by the untrue stories she was told. But when she finally meets Boo and sees that he is not the person the stories describe, she learns some important lessons about judgement.

Arthur “Boo” Radley, lives a split life between two contradictory identities. In public, he is known as a sociopath who only “(goes) out at night when the moon (is) down (to peep) in windows” and “commit stealthy small crimes” (10). In solitude, however, he is an individual stripped of his identity, and victim to the ruthlessness that allegations and suppositions spark. Initially, Scout believes the words of gossip and in response unnecessarily adds both Jems and her own assumptions to their depiction of Arthur, thus giving him the nickname “Boo” as their naivety illustrates Arthur as a “malevolent phantom” who dines on raw animals such as squirrels and cats in the dead of night (10). Not only did the belief of Boo being a crazed sociopath

Arthur Radley, or Boo Radley, is a neighbor of the Finch’s whom neither Scout nor Jem has ever seen. However the children have a different perspective on who Boo really is. The children view him as the mysterious neighbor who eats cats and drools everywhere. Truthfully, he got into a bit of trouble when he was younger which is why his father always kept him locked up inside the Radley house. In real life Boo Radley is a caring and protective person. While he may be a recluse he is watchful over Scout and Jem particularly close. In a way he viewed them as his children from afar and looked after them. One example of this is when Scout and Jem are watching the fire at Mrs. Maudie’s house and Boo places a blanket on Scout’s shivering body. Boo

The story, in the eyes of two innocent children Scout and her brother Jem, of the discrimination and hypocrisy throughout the town. Maycomb County, Alabama, faces an African American’s injustice while the children learn valuable lessons from their father, Atticus and their housemaid Calpurnia, during the Great Depression. All the while, we are learning from it. To Kill a Mockingbird teaches us the lessons of morale, justice and equality.