Characteristics Of Boo Radley In To Kill A Mockingbird

A Good Novel

To Kill a Mockingbird is an interesting novel by Harper Lee. Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, To Kill a Mockingbird introduces readers the life in the South back in the 1920s through the eyes of Scout – a young girl, and somehow throughout the events that happens in her childhood, we as readers may find our own pictures in the young age.

The mockingbird in this novel is Mr. Arthur Radley specifically, but the children prefer to call him Boo. Despite of his mysterious life, he appears at the end as a life saver, a children’s protector. Anything that changes his life, anything that spins his life around is not different than to kill a mockingbird.

Boo Radley, who Scout and Jem – her older brother – had never seen his face, is one

Despite of many more events happen, distract them for a while, but then there is always Boo Radley that they have the passion to make him come out, to see how he looks like, ‘just to have one good look at Boo Radley’ (246, ch. 26) before she dies. Boo Radley, as a mockingbird, eventually becomes a theme of the whole book because of his undeniable part in Scout, Jem and Dill childhood. He is a mystery that they are always curious about. At the very first lines of the novel, it begins with her mentioning Boo Radley: ‘when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.’ (2; ch. 1) The novel goes to an end with a beautiful scene, Scout takes Boo home. In the last chapter, Atticus accidentally happens to pick The Gray Ghost to read, it immediately brings her back to Boo Radley. And as closing the book, Scout emphasizes it again: ‘Atticus, he was real nice…’ (284, ch.

Its literal meaning is to not kill the mockingbird because they are not harmful to us, all they ever do is to entertain people by their singing. When Jem gets the air rifles, Atticus says he knows Jem’s targets would be the birds and he tells him that it is sinful to kill a mockingbird. Ms. Maudie explains to Scout: ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ (92, ch. 10) Another time that a mockingbird is mentioned as a subject in the conversation is when Atticus asked Scout if she understands his conversation with Heck Tate that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife, neither Jem nor Boo got involved, and she answers, ‘Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?’ (279, ch. 30) At this point, the meaning of To Kill a Mockingbird is understood in a figurative meaning, it is not right to bother people who may have their lives different than us but they do not do harmful to anyone around