To Kill A Mockingbird Themes

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, injustice is a main theme that is reflected towards many characters. To Kill a Mockingbird, is a novel written by Harper Lee and published in the nineteen-sixties. Many characters in the story are treated unfairly in society due to racial or prejudicial attitudes. Overall these characters are innocent victims of injustice. Atticus, Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson are considered to be mockingbirds in the novel. A mockingbird was defined as a bird that did nothing wrong, but sang beautiful music for us to hear. These characters did nothing wrong and were treated unfairly in their town. In this different society, there are many factors that have had an influence on people’s perceptions towards others.

As children grow up, they open their eyes to the harsh truths in the world around them that they once did not understand or question. This is experienced by the main characters of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The story is of a girl called Scout and her older brother, Jem, who go through the trials of growing up in the fictional small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. Racism is rampant in the mindset of the townspeople, shown when the children’s lawyer father, Atticus, takes the case of an obviously innocent African-American man and they convict him in their hearts before the trial even starts. Through this all, we can see the theme of loss of innocence in the children. Lee uses characterization to portray

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.

To get back at Atticus, Bob attacks Scout and Jem with a knife after a Halloween event. He breaks Jem’s arm and Scout is defenseless because of her costume. Just as Scout thinks she is surely going to die, a mysterious figure jumps in and turns the knife on Bob, stabbing him in the chest and killing him. This person carried Jem back to the Finch house with Scout following. It wasn’t until they got to the house that Scout realized her savior was actually Boo

Jem and Scout are the kids of Atticus, and Bob Ewell holds Atticus’s own choices against Jem and Scout. One night Bob Ewell got very drunk, and when he drinks he gets abusive, as shown back in chapter 18 “Is he good to you? Easy to get along with?” “He’s tollable ‘cept when” “except when what? When he drinks? Mayella nodded her head” This scene from the book gives the reader a hint that Bob Ewell is not a nice person when drunk. Bob followed Jem and Scout home one night and attacked them, he grabbed them and had a knife in his hand. Jem pushed him off and he landed on the knife and

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the main characters Boo Radley, Scout, and Jem learn a lesson that some people will kill or hurt a mockingbird. They experiences this empathy when Tom Robinson gets killed and when Bob Ewell’s hurts scout and Jem. Through the pivotal moment when Boo saves Scout and Jem, the reader understands Lee’s larger message of, anyone can hurt or kill a mockingbird.

To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee takes the title of her novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, and applies it to the actual story because the imagery of the mockingbird represents the “mockingbirds” in the novel of Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. A mockingbird is harmless and does nothing but sing and bring joy to the world. At the beginning of the book, Boo is a big help to the children, giving them something to make of out of their games, as well as something to talk about. Later in the story, it becomes clear that Boo has most of the character out of all the citizens of Maycomb, showing a symbol of what is pure and harmless.

Some of these people are, Dill, Boo Radley, Jem, and Mr. Raymond. All of these people have been hurt and did not deserve it because they were innocent, like the mockingbird. At the end of the book Jem also says that to kill Boo Radley would be like “shootin’ and a mockingbird”. When Tom Robinson was shot Miss Maudie said his death was like “the senseless slaughter of songbirds”. She was comparing his innocent death to the death of an innocent mockingbird. Ms. Maudie also explains to Scout why she should not shoot a mockingbird. She says “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird”. The connection was to the people in Maycomb who are like the mockingbirds and do nothing but help or bring them happiness. The last name of Jem, Atticus and Scout is also another type of small bird. So maybe Harper Lee was trying to show that they were also innocent and fragile. The town of Maycomb might have thought they would be an easy

After the trial, Bob had threatened Atticus for humiliating him. Bob Ewell went after Jem and Scout and was planning on killing them. On the walk back, Jem and Scout are being followed in the dark and suddenly Jem gets attacked. While Scout was on the ground, a fourth person comes out and saves the kids and kills Bob Ewell. The person carries Jem back home and Scout follows after, thinking it was Attius. “But I found the street light. A man passing under it. The man was walking with the staccato steps of someone carrying a load too heavy for him. He was carrying Jem.” said by Scout as the narrator. Pg.263 When she gets home, she realizes the fourth person who had saved them was Boo Radley. “ When I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor’s image blurred with my sudden tears. ‘Hey, Boo,’ I said.” Scout said as the narrator. Pg. 270 He risks his own safety to protect the kids from harm. He shows how much he cares and how dangerous he

As Atticus declares in his closing argument, “...there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal...that institution, gentlemen, is a court”( Lee 233). The courthouse is a place residing in the affairs of two opposing sides defending what is right in their eyes and an outcome that could reveal the true mentality of society. In the story, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee utilizes characters and conflicts in order to illustrate the themes of courage, racial prejudice, and coming of age.

The characters in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ all possess strong character traits. Although, each vary in how they’re treated in the harsh eye of society, this affects whether or not they can symbolize a Mockingbird⎼⎼a person of innocence, throughout the novel. For instance, since the town of Maycomb suffocates under prejudice, Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley does not appear innocent until the end of the story. An examination of Boo Radley’s misunderstood, gentle-minded, and thoughtful traits will prove further that he is a very innocent person, and his role is to symbolize one of the metaphorical Mockingbirds referenced by the book’s title. Firstly, Boo Radley serves as a threat, mythologized male throughout most of the novel, despite not appearing

The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in 1960 and written by Nelle Harper Lee. When Lee was writing this story, she wrote it by making a bundle of little stories and glueing them together to make the book that we all know and love. As a result of this interesting writing style, the novel has so many different themes strewn throughout its words. Some of the more prominent themes would be innocence, fear, and discrimination. Each theme can be seen mingled all over in the book, making them very hard to ignore as you read. Innocence takes its place in mainly Scout while fear makes its appearance multiple times in the novel. Discrimination is the main theme, showing up in every single chapter in the reading. Each of these themes makes

For this article, I have read the book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, written by Harper Lee and published 1960. It is a book about a girl growing up in the south in the 1930’s. Overall I can see why the book has been so highly appraised. Like many, I enjoyed reading from the innocence of eight-year-old Scout Finch. The reveal of Boo Radley near to the end of the book satisfied my curiosity. Although most of the book was pleasing to me, I disliked seeing all of the injustice coming from racism and prejudice directed toward people of color and families of the lower class. However, nothing was left to be desired at the end of the novel and although many things were unfair, there would not be much of a story if everything was perfect in the fictitious town of Maycomb, Alabama.

Justice plays a major role in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In a perfect world, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and other differences would not matter in the eyes of justice, but as it can be seen in this book, it does and the readers discover that justice is not served. Atticus Finch, being the hero of the story, told his son that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because all they do is create music and therefore are innocent creatures who mean no harm. Within the book, innocent characters are subjected to their own injustices by being victims of prejudice and racism, and are eventually destroyed themselves. Tom Robinson, Boo Radley, Jem Finch and Mayella Ewell represented the mockingbirds within the book. The only voice of justice within Maycomb is Atticus who tried to teach lessons of morality to his children and also tried to spread his views of justice