To Kill a Mockingbird

CHARACTERS

Scout Finch
The narrator and protagonist of the story. Jean Louise “Scout” Finch lives with her
father, Atticus, her brother, Jem, and their black cook, Calpurnia, in Maycomb. She is
intelligent and, by the standards of her time and place, a tomboy. Scout has a
combative streak and a basic faith in the goodness of the people in her community. As
the novel progresses, this faith is tested by the hatred and prejudice that emerge during
Tom Robinson’s trial. Scout eventually develops a more grown-up perspective that
enables her to appreciate human goodness without ignoring human evil.

Jem Finch
Scout’s brother and constant playmate at the beginning of the story. Jeremy Atticus
“Jem” Finch is something of a typical American boy, refusing to back down from dares
and fantasizing about playing football. Four years older than Scout, he gradually
separates himself from her games, but he remains her close companion and protector
throughout the novel. Jem moves into adolescence during the story, and his ideals are
shaken badly by the evil and injustice that he perceives during the trial of Tom
Robinson.

Atticus Finch
Scout and Jem’s father, a lawyer in Maycomb descended from an old local family. A
widower with a dry sense of humor, Atticus has instilled in his children his strong sense
of morality and justice. He is one of the few residents of Maycomb committed to racial
equality. When he agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man charged with raping a
white woman, he exposes himself and his family to the anger of the white community.
With his strongly held convictions, wisdom, and empathy, Atticus functions as the
novel’s moral backbone.

Arthur “Boo” Radley

A recluse who never sets foot outside his house, Boo dominates the imaginations of
Jem, Scout, and Dill. He is a powerful symbol of goodness swathed in an initial shroud
of creepiness, leaving little presents for Scout and Jem and emerging at an opportune
moment to save the children. An intelligent child emotionally damaged by his cruel
father, Boo provides an example of the threat that evil poses to innocence and
goodness. He is one of the novel’s “mockingbirds,” a good person injured by the evil of
mankind.

Bob Ewell
A drunken, mostly unemployed member of Maycomb’s poorest family. In his knowingly
wrongful accusation that Tom Robinson raped his daughter, Ewell represents the dark
side of the South: ignorance, poverty, squalor, and hate-filled racial prejudice.
Calpurnia
The Finches’ black cook. Calpurnia is a stern disciplinarian and the children’s bridge
between the white world and her own black community.

Charles Baker “Dill” Harris

Jem and Scout’s summer neighbor and friend. Dill is a diminutive, confident boy with an
active imagination. He becomes fascinated with Boo Radley and represents the
perspective of childhood innocence throughout the novel.

Tom Robinson
The black field hand accused of rape. Tom is one of the novel’s “mockingbirds,” an
important symbol of innocence destroyed by evil.

Mayella Ewell
Bob Ewell’s abused, lonely, unhappy daughter. Though one can pity Mayella because
of her overbearing father, one cannot pardon her for her shameful indictment of Tom
Robinson.

POINT OF VIEW
Scout narrates in the first person, telling what she saw and heard at the time and augmenting
this narration with thoughts and assessments of her experiences in retrospect. Although she is
by no means an omniscient narrator, she has matured considerably over the intervening years
and often implicitly and humorously comments on the naïveté she displayed in her thoughts and
actions as a young girl. Scout mostly tells of her own thoughts but also devotes considerable
time to recounting and analyzing Jem’s thoughts and actions.

SETTING

To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Maycomb, Alabama during 1933–1935. These years place
the events of the novel squarely within two important periods of American history: the Great
Depression and the Jim Crow era. The Great Depression is reflected in the poverty that affects
all of the residents of Maycomb. Even the Finches, who are objectively better off than many of
the other citizens in the area, are ultimately poor and living within the means available to them.
The years depicted in the novel also fall within the much longer period of time that modern
historians often refer to as the Jim Crow era. This term describes the time from the late 19th
century until the mid-1960s when black people in the United States could no longer be held in
slavery, but where laws limited the social, political, and economic possibilities available to black
citizens. We should remember that when Harper Lee wrote the novel in the late 1950s, the
Great Depression was over, but Jim Crow laws were still present in substantial portions of the
American South.
PLOT
Major Conflict The childhood innocence with which Scout and Jem begin the novel is
threatened by numerous incidents that expose the evil side of human nature, most notably the
guilty verdict in Tom Robinson’s trial and the vengefulness of Bob Ewell. As the novel
progresses, Scout and Jem struggle to maintain faith in the human capacity for good in light of
these recurring instances of human evil.

Rising Action Scout, Jem, and Dill become fascinated with their mysterious neighbor Boo
Radley and have an escalating series of encounters with him. Meanwhile, Atticus is assigned to
defend a black man, Tom Robinson against the spurious rape charges Bob Ewell has brought
against him. Watching the trial, Scout, and especially Jem, cannot understand how a jury could
possibly convict Tom Robinson based on the Ewells’ clearly fabricated story.

Climax Despite Atticus’s capable and impassioned defense, the jury finds Tom Robinson guilty.
The verdict forces Scout and Jem to confront the fact that the morals Atticus has taught them
cannot always be reconciled with the reality of the world and the evils of human nature.

Falling Action When word spreads that Tom Robinson has been shot while trying to escape
from prison, Jem struggles to come to terms with the injustice of the trial and of Tom Robinson’s
fate. After making a variety of threats against Atticus and others connected with the trial, Bob
Ewell assaults Scout and Jem as they walk home one night, but Boo Radley saves the children
and fatally stabs Ewell. The sheriff, knowing that Boo, like Tom Robinson, would be
misunderstood and likely convicted in a trial, protects Boo by saying that Ewell tripped and fell
on his own knife. After sitting and talking with Scout briefly, Boo retreats into his house, and
Scout never sees him again.

SYMBOLISM

Mockingbirds
The title of To Kill a Mockingbird has very little literal connection to the plot, but it carries
a great deal of symbolic weight in the book. In this story of innocents destroyed by evil,
the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Thus, to kill a mockingbird
is to destroy innocence. Throughout the book, a number of characters (Jem, Tom
Robinson, Dill, Boo Radley, Mr. Raymond) can be identified as mockingbirds—
innocents who have been injured or destroyed through contact with evil. This
connection between the novel’s title and its main theme is made explicit several times in
the novel: after Tom Robinson is shot, Mr. Underwood compares his death to “the
senseless slaughter of songbirds,” and at the end of the book Scout thinks that hurting
Boo Radley would be like “shootin’ a mockingbird.” Most important, Miss Maudie
explains to Scout: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us.
That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That Jem and Scout’s last name is Finch
(another type of small bird) indicates that they are particularly vulnerable in the racist
world of Maycomb, which often treats the fragile innocence of childhood harshly.

Boo Radley
As the novel progresses, the children’s changing attitude toward Boo Radley is an
important measurement of their development from innocence toward a grown-up moral
perspective. At the beginning of the book, Boo is merely a source of childhood
superstition. As he leaves Jem and Scout gifts and mends Jem’s pants, he gradually
becomes increasingly and intriguingly real to them. At the end of the novel, he becomes
fully human to Scout, illustrating that she has developed into a sympathetic and
understanding individual. Boo, an intelligent child ruined by a cruel father, is one of the
book’s most important mockingbirds; he is also an important symbol of the good that
exists within people. Despite the pain that Boo has suffered, the purity of his heart rules
his interaction with the children. In saving Jem and Scout from Bob Ewell, Boo proves
the ultimate symbol of good.

THEMES

The Coexistence Of Good And Evil

The most important theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is the book’s exploration of the moral
nature of human beings—that is, whether people are essentially good or essentially evil.
The novel approaches this question by dramatizing Scout and Jem’s transition from a
perspective of childhood innocence, in which they assume that people are good
because they have never seen evil, to a more adult perspective, in which they have
confronted evil and must incorporate it into their understanding of the world. As a result
of this portrayal of the transition from innocence to experience, one of the book’s
important subthemes involves the threat that hatred, prejudice, and ignorance pose to
the innocent: people such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are not prepared for the
evil that they encounter, and, as a result, they are destroyed. Even Jem is victimized to
an extent by his discovery of the evil of racism during and after the trial. Whereas Scout
is able to maintain her basic faith in human nature despite Tom’s conviction, Jem’s faith
in justice and in humanity is badly damaged, and he retreats into a state of
disillusionment.

The Importance Of Moral Education

Because exploration of the novel’s larger moral questions takes place within the
perspective of children, the education of children is necessarily involved in the
development of all of the novel’s themes. In a sense, the plot of the story charts Scout’s
moral education, and the theme of how children are educated—how they are taught to
move from innocence to adulthood—recurs throughout the novel (at the end of the
book, Scout even says that she has learned practically everything except algebra). This
theme is explored most powerfully through the relationship between Atticus and his
children, as he devotes himself to instilling a social conscience in Jem and Scout. The
scenes at school provide a direct counterpoint to Atticus’s effective education of his
children: Scout is frequently confronted with teachers who are either frustratingly
unsympathetic to children’s needs or morally hypocritical. As is true of To Kill a
Mockingbird’s other moral themes, the novel’s conclusion about education is that the
most important lessons are those of sympathy and understanding, and that a
sympathetic, understanding approach is the best way to teach these lessons. In this
way, Atticus’s ability to put himself in his children’s shoes makes him an excellent
teacher, while Miss Caroline’s rigid commitment to the educational techniques that she
learned in college makes her ineffective and even dangerous.
Prejudice
Discussions about prejudice in general, and racism in particular, are at the heart of To
Kill a Mockingbird. Conflicts over racism drive some of the most compelling and
memorable scenes in the novel. Racial conflict causes the two dramatic deaths that
occur in the story. On one level, To Kill a Mockingbird represents a simplistic and
moralistic view of racial prejudice. White people who are racist are bad, and white
people who are not racist are good. Atticus risks his reputation, his position in the
community, and ultimately the safety of his children because he is not racist, and
therefore good. Bob Ewell falsely accuses a black man of rape, spits on Atticus publicly,
and attempts to murder a child because he is racist, and therefore bad. To Kill a
Mockingbird does attempt to look at some of the complexities of living in a racist society.
Both Scout and Jem confront everything from unpleasantness to murderous hostility as
they learn how their family’s resistance to racial prejudice has positioned them against
the community at large.

Lying
There are two lies at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. Mayella Ewell says that Tom
Robinson raped her, and Heck Tate says that Bob Ewell accidentally stabbed himself.
The first lie destroys an innocent man who occupies a precarious social position in
Maycomb because of his race. The second lie prevents the destruction of an innocent
man who occupies a precarious social position in Maycomb because of his extreme
reclusiveness. Taken together, the two lies reflect how deception can be used to harm
or to protect. The two lies also reveal how the most vulnerable members of society can
be the most deeply affected by the stories people tell about them. Social status also
determines who is allowed to tell a lie. During the trial, prosecutor Horace Gilmer
confronts Tom Robinson, asking Tom if he is accusing Mayella Ewell of lying. Even
though Tom knows full well that Mayella is lying, he cannot say so because in Maycomb
the lies of a white woman carry more weight than the truth told by a black man. Atticus,
on the other hand, who is white, male, and of a higher class status than Mayella, can
accuse her of lying when he suggests that it was really Mayella’s father, not Tom, who
beat her.

KEY QUESTION AND ANSWER

How is Tom Robinson a Mockingbird?

The phrase "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird" refers to intentionally and pointlessly destroying
something that does no harm. The mockingbird is a songbird, not a pest, and it isn't a game
bird. Killing a mockingbird serves no purpose, and therefore is an act of unnecessary cruelty.
When the jury convicts Tom Robinson of rape despite the absence of physical evidence and
despite Atticus’s compelling defense, the jury is guilty of the same unnecessary cruelty. The jury
specifically, and the town of Maycomb generally, destroy a good person who has never done
harm simply because of the color of his skin. Though Tom is the symbolic mockingbird at the
heart of the novel, he is not the only character who fits that description. Heck Tate also
specifically describes Boo Radley as a mockingbird, in that he is a harmless person who is the
victim of pointless cruelty. Unlike Tom Robinson, Boo Radley is not destroyed, though he does
suffer greatly.
What does the Ending mean?
The novel ends after Bob Ewell attacks Scout and Jem, and Boo Radley rescues them, killing
Bob in the process. Atticus and Sheriff Heck Tate have a conversation about how to deal with
the situation, and Scout walks Boo home. The conversation between Atticus and Heck can be
difficult to understand, because the two men are talking about two different things. Atticus, who
believes Jem is the one who killed Bob, thinks Heck wants to cover up the truth to protect Jem.
Atticus is adamantly against lying to protect Jem. He thinks that protecting Jem from the law will
undermine Atticus’s relationship with his children and everything that he has taught them. Heck,
however, realizes that Boo killed Bob Ewell, and wants to cover up the truth to protect Boo.
Heck doesn’t believe that Boo will be in any kind of legal trouble, because he was clearly
protecting the children, but he thinks that the community will want to thank Boo and make him a
hero which would be ruinous to Boo’s intense desire for privacy.