Racial Tension and Childhood in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

The timeless classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, is a fictional novel that tells about a young girl’s childhood in a southern town, in the early 1930’s. The quiet little town is approached with a problem between a hardworking black man and a dirty white family. The young girl in the story named Scout tells the story of her childhood in which she lived in a small town called Maycomb, Alabama. Scout, motherless from the age of two, and her brother Jem the age of six, have made it through life with each other, their loving father, and their wise house worker Calpurnia. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Maycomb, Alabama in the early 1930’s. The main characters and protagonists in the novel are Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, Atticus Finch,

One hot, boring summer, they meet a new friend named Dill Harris. Dill comes to visit his aunt Rachael every summer. All three children become obsessed with tales of their odd neighbor Boo Radley. They do many imaginative things to try and get Boo to come out of his home. One summer, Atticus is approached to take a case between Tom Robinson and the Ewells. In this case, he will defend Tom who is being accused of rape. After the trial, Atticus and everyone in Maycomb is confident that he has won the case. However, the jury convicts Tom, although he is clearly innocent. Atticus is almost positive that he can get an appeal for Tom, but while in prison Tom tries to escape and is shot seventeen times. Bob Ewell is still angry at Atticus for defending Tom in court, so he attacks Scout and Jem on the way home from their school pageant. An unidentified stranger in the woods saves them from Mr. Ewell and kills him. The stranger turned out to be Boo Radley. The Finch children are no longer frightened by Boo and now call him a friend. The main conflict in the novel is an external conflict because it is an outside force causing problems for the characters. The external conflict is man versus the society it lives in. In particular, at this point in history there was a great deal of racism and segregation in the south. In fact, much racism is shown towards Atticus and his kids when he defends Tom Robinson, who is an

Jem and Scout are two innocent children who believe all people are good. This is life through the eyes of a child. It is at this point in their lives where they are introduced to the bad in the world; the hatred and prejudice of people who are different. Jem and Scout were witnesses to this evil, but Boo and Tom’s lives were surrounded by it. In the end, their lives were destroyed because of this evil. After the verdict, Jem’s sense of the world as he once knew it had changed. He saw the evil of racism first hand throughout the trial. Therefore, damaging the faith that he once had in mankind. Scout on the other hand appears to look at life differently, but also seemed to bounce back and recover from Tom Robinson’s fate to regain her child like faith. An important symbol in the book is mockingbirds. Mockingbirds represent innocence. The book refers to mockingbirds many times throughout the book. Atticus refers to mockingbirds when Jem and Scout are learning to shoot their new rifles. He tells them they can shoot blue jays, but “It is a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Miss Maudie also refers to mockingbirds as birds who do nothing but “Sing their hearts out for us.” The mockingbird is an innocent harmless bird, much like the characters Jem and Scout with their child like innocence. Then you have Tom Robinson, an innocent man who was wrongly accused of rape. Lastly, there is Boo Radley an