Importance Of Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

Innocence is the wonderful ignorance people possess about the world. Nothing is wrong; people are kind; the world is impeccable, but eventually, the world shows its propensity to strip people of their innocence and leave them to the true cruelty of everything and everyone. In her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee tells the adventures of Scout and Jem Finch. Through the eyes of Scout, the reader gets a vicarious sense as to what small, southern town life was like for a child in 1935. These particular children are the son and daughter of Atticus Finch, an intelligent and dexterous lawyer, who happens to be the defense in Maycomb’s court case of the century. The audience gets to experience the dynamic characters, that are Scout and Jem,

He experiences this during the verdict and his untimely death. Despite the solid defense Atticus displays, Tom is found guilty. This is because the judicial system is racially biased. Atticus believes Tom and knows that he is innocent; however, he knows that he will not win this case. Scout is curious as to why Atticus would take a case that he knows he can’t win. Atticus explains that “because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,” (Lee 101). This implies that the system is biased. The reader is first exposed to the verdict on page 282 when Lee states “A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when the jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson.” This is when Tom loses his legal innocence. Another way the audience sees Tom lose his innocence is when he dies. There was confusion because Atticus is very convinced that they would get an appeal. He explains that Tom “was tired of white men’s chances,” (Lee 315). This is evidence of Tom’s loss of innocence because this shows his loss of hope. This is part of the childhood innocence that still remains in Tom. After Tom lost the case, he basically gave up hope of living and took it upon himself to be free. Due to the harmful beliefs of society, Tom loses his innocence and his life; however, Tom is not the only character to be hurt by societies damaging

The character developments of Jem, Scout, Tom Robinson, and Boo Radley are evidence of this. Lee conveys this issue through the fictional town of Maycomb; however, this is what all people experience today. If the specifics of a southern town were to be taken out, then a brief description of real society is left. The people of Maycomb reflect everyone as a whole; those who were different than the majority of the novel represent the dissidents of society. The real world issues are what expose people to the truths of the world they live in. It changes them and they lose the naievity and child-like innocence they possess. Lee’s brilliance that is To Kill a Mockingbird reflects the whole world and shows the audience that the flaws of all of the people purloin the purity in one’s