The Title of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

The novel is written by Harper Lee The title, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is a very fitting title for the novel, because the story revolves around the idea of innocence being lost, destroyed by evil and the cruelty of a narrow-minded society. Mockingbirds are harmless creatures that ‘don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us,’ but it is powerless against its attackers. The main mockingbirds in the novel are the characters, Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson who are both attacked by the cruel society of Maycomb in different ways but are defenceless and cannot fight back. Mayella Ewell and Dolphus Raymond are symbolised as mockingbirds as well.

Arthur Boo Radley was not a very clever boy and while all the other boys went to a state school, he was imprisoned in his own home by his parents because of a crime he committed in his teen years. But just before his father passed away fifteen years later, it was said that Boo had stabbed his leg with a pair of scissors while cutting newspaper clippings for his scrapbook. Boo’s father Mr Radley, ‘the meanest man ever God blew breath into’, possibly due to his extreme religious views, that he ‘took the word of God as his only law.’ He did not send Boo to a psychiatric hospital but let him be locked in the courthouse basement for many years before he came home again. After his father had died, Boo was taken care of by his brother Nathan Radley. Though he was not as mean as his father, he still locked Arthur up in the house. There were many rumours flying around Maycomb about Boo, for example Jem described him as six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could,’ which suggests that he is wild and almost like an animal however these stories d...

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...ly all the children, especially Jem, and Scout are mockingbirds and the adults, Tom Robinson and Boo Radley who suffer from certain members of society’s actions. Despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong, they are destroyed by the evil that surrounds them especially Tom who is exactly like the title; killed. The title shows how this is wrong, and ‘a sin,’ a very big one because Tom never hurt anyone. Overall, all the mockingbirds in the novel are in some way affected by the evils that exist in the world and the title hints at the prejudice theme that runs throughout the book with mockingbirds as symbols. The title can be viewed in another way, as a warning, a warning to think about your decisions, to see if they have the innocence of the mockingbird. It is a reminder to judge what a person is actually like instead of what you might see at first glance.