To Kill A Mockingbird Themes

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

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.

Childhood years are a very impressionable time. This is no different for the fictional characters Scout and Jem Finch. Growing up in southern Alabama, they learned many lessons from the people around them and the circumstances they faced. Some of these important lessons learned are courage, empathy, and prejudice.

Morals, to some, are like a choice between good and evil. This is a choice that Scout, Jem, and Dill of Harper Lee’s coming of age novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, must make as they unearth the ideas that Martin Luther King later spread as a rallying cry throughout a nation. He proclaims that the “Arc of  the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” These characters ripen into heroic figures as they question the morals of those around them as well as the morals they were given throughout their childhood. Time and time again, Lee’s insight of how racism and classism drive people's morals have a profound effect the development of a heroic figure. Lee teaches the reader that some morals defy social normalities in order to reach

Writer Oscar Wilde once said “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life” Novels are often prime examples of life imitating art, in many novels a reader can draw a parallel between the novel and their lives. This comparison becomes even more astounding when themes found in everyday life and modern culture can be found in novels written over 60 years ago. A prime example of this is in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. The novel tells the story of Jem and Scout Finch two children who are forced to grow up and face the harsh realities of the world when their dad is chosen to represent a man in one of the biggest cases their small town of Maycomb, Alabama has ever seen. The themes present in To Kill A Mockingbird were relevant when the novel was written and are still relevant today. Themes such as Prejudice, Love and coming of age are present in To Kill A Mockingbird and can still be found today through other novels or just simply through other people's experiences.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of morality.” Demonstrated every day in reality, and expressed in many works of art and literature, this maxim may best be shown in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird is the multifaceted and passionate story about and narrated by young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch as she grows up in 1930s Alabama, telling of the lessons she learns about prejudice, justice, and social rules. The narrative of her family, her neighbors, and society in general are seen through her eyes, and her own growth in response progresses throughout the book. The themes of To Kill a Mockingbird - of innocence, prejudice, morality, belief, and justice - each

Throughout the entire novel, the idea of there being good and evil plays a significant role. In the novel, Atticus tries to reflect good onto Scout & Jem, but is unable to stop them from witnessing the evil side of human nature. At the start of the novel, they assumed that people were good because they had never experienced or seen evil. The Tom Robinson case cracked that barrier for Jem, and he simply lost it. Scout was able to hold onto her faith that people are good, but still understood that it wasn’t

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, symbolism is used to show the innocence of the children and the innocence of some people. There are a few main children in this story. The main characters are, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, Jeremy Atticus, "Jem" Finch, Charles Baker "Dill" Harris, Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. Boo symbolizes innocence even though he isn't a child anymore. The mockingbird also symbolizes innocence.

In the book To Kill a Mockingbird the setting takes place in the sleepy southern town of Maycomb during the 1930s. In the town almost everyone is poor because of the depression, from the Finches to the Negroes. Author Harper Lee shows the way of life in this town very vividly and realistically, the racism, and the domestic violence. The town has its own special beliefs and customs, such as the belief that certain families have traits that define them. Three very prominent themes in this book are poverty, racism, and domestic violence.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, there are many themes that are weaved into the plot. The themes provided throughout the novel shape the book and deliver important messages. They combine to craft the characteristics, feelings and emotions one experiences. As the novel progresses, the reader gains the ability to understand each one of the themes. They can interpret which incidents the themes arise from and which characters are present. Harper Lee incorporated themes of courage, justice and love to illustrate the times in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930’s.

A theme that can be applied to To Kill a Mockingbird and my life is, “It’s important to listen to what the people who love you in life have to say because it can impact the way you live and/or act.” As the story progresses, we see Scout and Jem majorly influenced by Atticus’s lessons which later leads to us seeing Scout getting changed the most because of her excess room to change. The reason why I believe this theme applies to To Kill a Mockingbird is because Scout listens to Atticus’s advice on how she should act and this causes her positive character development, the resolution of conflict in Scout’s point of view within the story, and how it relates to my life in general. Throughout the story, we see Scout repeatedly get into petty,

Harold Bloom states that To Kill a Mockingbird returns people to an optimism about possibilities human nature and in societal concern that many of them no longer share (Bloom 1). Serving as one of the most influential pieces of fiction produced in the United States, To Kill a Mockingbird still draws almost a million readers annually, more than forty years after its publication. Even, it ranked second only to the Bible “as making a difference in people’s lives” (Shields 1). The novel portrays a young girl’s love for her father and brother and the experience of childhood in a town called Maycomb. A 9 years old narrator, Scout does not only reveals the primary theme, racism, but also other important themes including many valuable aspects. Shackelford

The concept of good and evil has existed since the beginning of time, but it is not initially all black and white. In Harper Lee's bildungsroman, To Kill A Mockingbird, Jeremy Atticus Finch discovered this for himself. Jeremy or rather Jem and his younger sister, Scout, grew up in Maycomb, Alabama but unlike his sister, Jem begins to understand the adult world. As he matures over the years, Jem learns that good and evil is a complicated idea that takes on a variety of forms. Whether it be from the Radleys, Mrs. Dubose, or the trial of Tom Robinson, Jem learns what good and evil truly are.

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.

Evil has long been viewed an abstract construct of human creation, yet its moral nature and connotation in humanity has long been scrutinized, further raising the question – what is true human nature? The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, delves into the coexistence of the lightness and darkness in people, characterizing the light with the archetype of a mockingbird, due to their innocence, defenselessness, and acts of purity, or ‘singing.’ Taking place in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama during the the 1930s, the novel focuses on the journey of maturity of two siblings, Jem and Scout, with the aid of her father, Atticus. Tensions escalate as Atticus, a respected lawyer, defends Tom Robinson, an African American man, from the accusation of raping a white woman, Mayella Ewell. While on the surface, Mayella appears to be a pitiful portrayal of white privilege, scratching beneath would reveal her lack of defense against the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father, Bob Ewell, an alcoholic who wastes the money he receives from government assistance on alcohol, and is despised by society as well as his own family. Mayella is forced to act as a mother figure for her siblings and herself, thus singing as a mockingbird. However, while she possesses two of the characteristics of a mockingbird, her vulnerability against her father and society and by ‘singing’ through her attempts to better her and her family’s lives, she lacks innocence through her condemnation of Tom