Atticus Finch Quotes In To Kill A Mockingbird

The novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about a family of three including their black cook Calpurnia. They live in a town called Maycomb in Alabama. Atticus Finch the widowed father is a lawyer and is outgoing, kind, and true to himself. This book is a very popular book throughout many states in America because this book tells a meaningful message. Atticus teaches his two kids Jem and Scout to always do the right thing no matter what the situation is. Harper Lee uses the character of Atticus Finch to teach values and beliefs from seeing things from another point of view, to do what is right all the time and to be integrative to yourself.

Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose is an old woman who is ill and battles a morphine addiction. Jem and Scout believe that she is just a mean old lady that talks bad about their father all day but doesn’t know she is fighting a morphine addiction. After Jem finds out the death of Mrs. Dubose and the gift she left him he doesn’t appreciate the perfect camellia and Atticus tells him that it was her way of telling you everything is alright now. “A lady?” Jem raised his head. His face was scarlet. After all those things she said about you, a lady?” “She was, she had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe… son, I told you that if you hadn’t lost your head I’d have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her; I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is man with a gun in his hands” (p.149).This conversation between Atticus and Jem represent how Atticus opens up his mind to see things from other point of view. Atticus is concerned that Jem takes his lesson of courage to heart because he wants Jem to take what he lear...

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...ain respect later on. Similar to when the black folks in Maycomb found out that Atticus was defending Tom they probably gained a new level of respect for him because it isn’t ordinary to see a white lawyer trying to defend a black person in Maycomb. Even though Atticus lost the trial a good amount of the blacks have full respect for him.

Harper Lee used Atticus’s character to symbolize many different themes during the book. She allowed the readers to get a great understanding of what type of person Atticus is and how he reflects on others. In part two of the book once Jem was twelve he started to notice how great of a role model his father was and wanted to be exactly like him. Seeing things from another point of view, doing what is right and being integrative to himself allowed the reader to understand the character better and to understand the moral of the book.