Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

As the novel progresses, she starts to witness racial prejudice; which is something that no minor should come in contact with during her childhood. By exposing their innocent natures, we see how Boo, Tom Robinson and Scout are the mockingbirds in this novel. In reality, Boo has done nothing wrong. His confinement began when he, along with some other people, had played a prank and gotten into some trouble with the law. Later in his life, a rumor is spread that he had stabbed his father with scissors.

Boo Radley attacked his father with scissors, and people told him to put Boo in and asylum, his father refused and locked him in the house. For example, Boo Radley is seen as “a malevolent phantom” (8), even though Scout and Jem have never seen him. He is viewed by Maycomb County as a mysterious and hateful creature. The people make up fictitious stories about him, which further hurts his image. In addition, even “a negro would not pass the Radley house at night, he would cut across to the sidewalk”.

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.

She also learns that her father is an extra-ordinary man, fighting for a Negro's rights in court. At the trial of Tom Robinson Scout learns about equality and inequality, about justice and injustice and finally about racial prejudice. Many times during the course of the novel the idea of the mockingbird comes to mind. We first hear of the bird when the children are given there first air rifles for Christmas, There father warns them to never shoot the songbird, saying to do so would be a sin. During the trial of Tom Robinson, it occurs to the reader that the Negro has many characteristics he shares with the mockingbird, He is a gentle man, who has never harmed anyone and only tried to help.

Even though one loses their childhood innocence, he or she eventually gains more consciousness and understands more about themselves and the world around them. The first example in To Kill a Mockingbird of when Scout and her brother Jem lose their innocence has to do with a game they made based on Arthur Radley. Mr. Radley, also known as Boo, never goes outside of his home, at least not for anyone to see. It is believed by the citizens of Maycomb County that he is a monster, and the children due to the rumors have a set description of him, “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” (Lee 16). Atticus Finch one day sees the children playing the game.

He was supposedly imprisoned for fifteen years, until it was said that he had stabbed his father with a pair of scissors. The pecans dropped from the tree in their yard are rumored to be poisoned by Boo Radley; the children never eat them when they fall into the schoolyard. It was said that he could only come out of his house at night, and Miss Stephanie Crawford said that she saw him looking in through her window one night. Any small mishap or issue was always blamed on Boo, such as the azaleas freezing in a cold snap. When the crazy Addie killed the household pets at night, they blamed it all on Boo.

The novel follows Wright through his youth all the way to his adult years. In the novel Black Boy Richard Wright indentified how the institution of the United States intentionally deprived blacks of their basic needs such as food, education and knowledge of the world due to racism. In the early 1900s, Society was set a certain way for certain people, which Wright did not fit the requirements. Wright beat and killed innocent animals just for the fun of it. “Kill that damn thing!” (Wright 12) Wright violent acts began with his father, one day while they were out in the field a cat walked by making noise which irritated Nathan, Wrights father.

For this he was locked in the courthouse basement for many years before he came home again. From these stories learned from gossiping neighbors, Jem, Scout, and Dill made ghost stories of Boo Radley, and the other children in town were afraid of him as well. They said that he only came out at night to eat cats and squirrels, and he was the local spook. Boo, however, begins to win Scout and Jem over by leaving gifts for them in the knothole of an oak tree until his brother, Nathan, cements the knothole. Boo even covers Scout with a blanket on a cold night she and Jem spent in front of the Radley house while Miss Maudie’s house burned down.

However, they did not have the money to even get them to California much less start a new life there. Jesse called his friends; Bob and Charley Ford, to help him rob this last job at Platte City. What Jesse did not know was, while he was laying in bed with his wife thinking of the future for day, Bob started to panic and feel paranoid. Bob wakes up Charley in an uproar thinking that Jesse knows they have betrayed him. Bob then confesses he believes somebody found out and told Jesse that they are the ones who killed his cousin Wood Hite.

Atticus showed courage when in the book he decided that he would stand up for Tom Robinson, a Negro recently victimized by false rape, in court and try his best not to let an innocent man die. This is shown when Scout heard from a kid at school who is making fun of her because her dad defends Negroes. Later Atticus is talking to Scout about defending Negroes and when Scout asked him if he really does do that, Atticus replied, of course I do, but he also replied saying that he knows he should not. Although Atticus decided to defend Tom he knew at the beginning of the trial he was going to lose and he said that there was no point in him trying. “Atticus, are we going to win it?” “No, honey,” “Then why-” “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” (Lee 101).