To
Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Plot
Overview
Scout
Finch lives with her brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, in the
sleepy Alabama town of Maycomb. Maycomb is suffering through the Great
Depression, but Atticus is a prominent lawyer and the Finch family is
reasonably well off in comparison to the rest of society. One summer, Jem and
Scout befriend a boy named Dill, who has come to live in their neighborhood for
the summer, and the trio acts out stories together. Eventually, Dill becomes
fascinated with the spooky house on their street called the Radley Place. The
house is owned by Mr. Nathan Radley, whose brother, Arthur (nicknamed Boo), has
lived there for years without venturing outside.
Scout goes
to school for the first time that fall and detests it. She and Jem find gifts
apparently left for them in a knothole of a tree on the Radley property. Dill
returns the following summer, and he, Scout, and Jem begin to act out the story
of Boo Radley. Atticus puts a stop to their antics, urging the children to try
to see life from another person’s perspective before making judgments. But, on
Dill’s last night in Maycomb for the summer, the three sneak onto the Radley
property, where Nathan Radley shoots at them. Jem loses his pants in the
ensuing escape. When he returns for them, he finds them mended and hung over
the fence. The next winter, Jem and Scout find more presents in the tree,
presumably left by the mysterious Boo. Nathan Radley eventually plugs the
knothole with cement. Shortly thereafter, a fire breaks out in another
neighbor’s house, and during the fire someone slips a blanket on Scout’s
shoulders as she watches the blaze. Convinced that Boo did it, Jem tells
Atticus about the mended pants and the presents.
To the
consternation of Maycomb’s racist white community, Atticus agrees to defend a
black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping a white woman.
Because of Atticus’s decision, Jem and Scout are subjected to abuse from other
children, even when they celebrate Christmas at the family compound on Finch’s
Landing. Calpurnia, the Finches’ black cook, takes them to the local black
church, where the warm and close-knit community largely embraces the children.
Atticus’s
sister, Alexandra, comes to live with the Finches the next summer. Dill, who is
supposed to live with his “new father” in another town, runs away and comes to
Maycomb. Tom Robinson’s trial begins, and when the accused man is placed in the
local jail, a mob gathers to lynch him. Atticus faces the mob down the night
before the trial. Jem and Scout, who have sneaked out of the house, soon join
him. Scout recognizes one of the men, and her polite questioning about his son
shames him into dispersing the mob.
At the
trial itself, the children sit in the “colored balcony” with the town’s black
citizens. Atticus provides clear evidence that the accusers, Mayella Ewell and
her father, Bob, are lying: in fact, Mayella propositioned Tom Robinson, was
caught by her father, and then accused Tom of rape to cover her shame and
guilt. Atticus provides impressive evidence that the marks on Mayella’s face
are from wounds that her father inflicted; upon discovering her with Tom, he
called her a whore and beat her. Yet, despite the significant evidence pointing
to Tom’s innocence, the all-white jury convicts him. The innocent Tom later
tries to escape from prison and is shot to death. In the aftermath of the
trial, Jem’s faith in justice is badly shaken, and he lapses into despondency
and doubt.
Despite
the verdict, Bob Ewell feels that Atticus and the judge have made a fool out of
him, and he vows revenge. He menaces Tom Robinson’s widow, tries to break into
the judge’s house, and finally attacks Jem and Scout as they walk home from a
Halloween party. Boo Radley intervenes, however, saving the children and
stabbing Ewell fatally during the struggle. Boo carries the wounded Jem back to
Atticus’s house, where the sheriff, in order to protect Boo, insists that Ewell
tripped over a tree root and fell on his own knife. After sitting with Scout
for a while, Boo disappears once more into the Radley house.
Later,
Scout feels as though she can finally imagine what life is like for Boo. He has
become a human being to her at last. With this realization, Scout embraces her
father’s advice to practice sympathy and understanding and demonstrates that
her experiences with hatred and prejudice will not sully her faith in human
goodness.
Character
List
Jean Louise “Scout” Finch -
The narrator and protagonist of the story. Scout 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.
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.
Jeremy Atticus “Jem” Finch -
Scout’s brother and constant playmate at the beginning of the story. Jem 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.
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.
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.
Miss Maudie Atkinson -
The Finches’ neighbor, a sharp-tongued widow, and an old friend of the family.
Miss Maudie is almost the same age as Atticus’s younger brother, Jack. She
shares Atticus’s passion for justice and is the children’s best friend among
Maycomb’s adults.
Calpurnia - The Finches’
black cook. Calpurnia is a stern disciplinarian and the children’s bridge
between the white world and her own black community.
Aunt Alexandra -
Atticus’s sister, a strong-willed woman with a fierce devotion to her family.
Alexandra is the perfect Southern lady, and her commitment to propriety and
tradition often leads her to clash with Scout.
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.
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.
Link Deas - Tom
Robinson’s employer. In his willingness to look past race and praise the
integrity of Tom’s character, Deas epitomizes the opposite of prejudice.
Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose -
An elderly, ill-tempered, racist woman who lives near the Finches. Although Jem
believes that Mrs. Dubose is a thoroughly bad woman, Atticus admires her for
the courage with which she battles her morphine addiction.
Nathan Radley -
Boo Radley’s older brother. Scout thinks that Nathan is similar to the deceased
Mr. Radley, Boo and Nathan’s father. Nathan cruelly cuts off an important
element of Boo’s relationship with Jem and Scout when he plugs up the knothole
in which Boo leaves presents for the children.
Heck Tate - The sheriff
of Maycomb and a major witness at Tom Robinson’s trial. Heck is a decent man
who tries to protect the innocent from danger.
Mr. Underwood -
The publisher of Maycomb’s newspaper. Mr. Underwood respects Atticus and proves
his ally.
Mr. Dolphus Raymond -
A wealthy white man who lives with his black mistress and mulatto children.
Raymond pretends to be a drunk so that the citizens of Maycomb will have an
explanation for his behavior. In reality, he is simply jaded by the hypocrisy
of white society and prefers living among blacks.
Mr. Walter Cunningham -
A poor farmer and part of the mob that seeks to lynch Tom Robinson at the jail.
Mr. Cunningham displays his human goodness when Scout’s politeness compels him
to disperse the men at the jail.
Analysis
of Major Characters
Scout
Scout is a very unusual little girl, both in her own qualities and
in her social position. She is unusually intelligent (she learns to read before
beginning school), unusually confident (she fights boys without fear),
unusually thoughtful (she worries about the essential goodness and evil of
mankind), and unusually good (she always acts with the best intentions). In
terms of her social identity, she is unusual for being a tomboy in the prim and
proper Southern world of Maycomb.
One quickly realizes when reading To Kill a Mockingbird that Scout is who she
is because of the way Atticus has raised her. He has nurtured her mind,
conscience, and individuality without bogging her down in fussy social
hypocrisies and notions of propriety. While most girls in Scout’s position
would be wearing dresses and learning manners, Scout, thanks to Atticus’s
hands-off parenting style, wears overalls and learns to climb trees with Jem
and Dill. She does not always grasp social niceties (she tells her teacher that
one of her fellow students is too poor to pay her back for lunch), and human
behavior often baffles her (as when one of her teachers criticizes Hitler’s
prejudice against Jews while indulging in her own prejudice against blacks),
but Atticus’s protection of Scout from hypocrisy and social pressure has
rendered her open, forthright, and well meaning.
At the beginning of the novel, Scout is an innocent, good-hearted
five-year-old child who has no experience with the evils of the world. As the
novel progresses, Scout has her first contact with evil in the form of racial
prejudice, and the basic development of her character is governed by the
question of whether she will emerge from that contact with her conscience and
optimism intact or whether she will be bruised, hurt, or destroyed like Boo
Radley and Tom Robinson. Thanks to Atticus’s wisdom, Scout learns that though
humanity has a great capacity for evil, it also has a great capacity for good,
and that the evil can often be mitigated if one approaches others with an outlook
of sympathy and understanding. Scout’s development into a person capable of
assuming that outlook marks the culmination of the novel and indicates that,
whatever evil she encounters, she will retain her conscience without becoming
cynical or jaded. Though she is still a child at the end of the book, Scout’s
perspective on life develops from that of an innocent child into that of a near
grown-up.
Atticus
As one of the most prominent citizens in Maycomb during the Great
Depression, Atticus is relatively well off in a time of widespread poverty.
Because of his penetrating intelligence, calm wisdom, and exemplary behavior,
Atticus is respected by everyone, including the very poor. He functions as the
moral backbone of Maycomb, a person to whom others turn in times of doubt and
trouble. But the conscience that makes him so admirable ultimately causes his
falling out with the people of Maycomb. Unable to abide the town’s comfortable
ingrained racial prejudice, he agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man. Atticus’s
action makes him the object of scorn in Maycomb, but he is simply too
impressive a figure to be scorned for long. After the trial, he seems destined
to be held in the same high regard as before.
Atticus practices the ethic of sympathy and understanding that he
preaches to Scout and Jem and never holds a grudge against the people of
Maycomb. Despite their callous indifference to racial inequality, Atticus sees
much to admire in them. He recognizes that people have both good and bad
qualities, and he is determined to admire the good while understanding and
forgiving the bad. Atticus passes this great moral lesson on to Scout—this
perspective protects the innocent from being destroyed by contact with evil.
Ironically, though Atticus is a heroic figure in the novel and a
respected man in Maycomb, neither Jem nor Scout consciously idolizes him at the
beginning of the novel. Both are embarrassed that he is older than other
fathers and that he doesn’t hunt or fish. But Atticus’s wise parenting, which
he sums up in Chapter 30 by saying, “Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks
at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him,” ultimately
wins their respect. By the end of the novel, Jem, in particular, is fiercely
devoted to Atticus (Scout, still a little girl, loves him uncritically). Though
his children’s attitude toward him evolves, Atticus is characterized throughout
the book by his absolute consistency. He stands rigidly committed to justice
and thoughtfully willing to view matters from the perspectives of others. He
does not develop in the novel but retains these qualities in equal measure,
making him the novel’s moral guide and voice of conscience.
Jem
If Scout is an innocent girl who is exposed to evil at an early
age and forced to develop an adult moral outlook, Jem finds himself in an even
more turbulent situation. His shattering experience at Tom Robinson’s trial
occurs just as he is entering puberty, a time when life is complicated and
traumatic enough. His disillusionment upon seeing that justice does not always
prevail leaves him vulnerable and confused at a critical, formative point in
his life. Nevertheless, he admirably upholds the commitment to justice that
Atticus instilled in him and maintains it with deep conviction throughout the novel.
Unlike the jaded Mr. Raymond, Jem is not without hope: Atticus
tells Scout that Jem simply needs time to process what he has learned. The
strong presence of Atticus in Jem’s life seems to promise that he will recover
his equilibrium. Later in his life, Jem is able to see that Boo Radley’s
unexpected aid indicates there is good in people. Even before the end of the
novel, Jem shows signs of having learned a positive lesson from the trial; for
instance, at the beginning of Chapter 25, he refuses to allow Scout to squash a
roly-poly bug because it has done nothing to harm her. After seeing the unfair
destruction of Tom Robinson, Jem now wants to protect the fragile and harmless.
The idea that Jem resolves his cynicism and moves toward a happier
life is supported by the beginning of the novel, in which a grown-up Scout
remembers talking to Jem about the events that make up the novel’s plot. Scout
says that Jem pinpointed the children’s initial interest in Boo Radley at the
beginning of the story, strongly implying that he understood what Boo
represented to them and, like Scout, managed to shed his innocence without
losing his hope.
Themes,
Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
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 moral voice ofTo
Kill a Mockingbird is
embodied by Atticus Finch, who is virtually unique in the novel in that he has
experienced and understood evil without losing his faith in the human capacity
for goodness. Atticus understands that, rather than being simply creatures of
good or creatures of evil, most people have both good and bad qualities. The
important thing is to appreciate the good qualities and understand the bad
qualities by treating others with sympathy and trying to see life from their
perspective. He tries to teach this ultimate moral lesson to Jem and Scout to
show them that it is possible to live with conscience without losing hope or
becoming cynical. In this way, Atticus is able to admire Mrs. Dubose’s courage
even while deploring her racism. Scout’s progress as a character in the novel
is defined by her gradual development toward understanding Atticus’s lessons,
culminating when, in the final chapters, Scout at last sees Boo Radley as a
human being. Her newfound ability to view the world from his perspective
ensures that she will not become jaded as she loses her innocence.
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.
The
Existence of Social Inequality
Differences
in social status are explored largely through the overcomplicated social hierarchy
of Maycomb, the ins and outs of which constantly baffle the children. The
relatively well-off Finches stand near the top of Maycomb’s social hierarchy,
with most of the townspeople beneath them. Ignorant country farmers like the
Cunninghams lie below the townspeople, and the white trash Ewells rest below
the Cunninghams. But the black community in Maycomb, despite its abundance of
admirable qualities, squats below even the Ewells, enabling Bob Ewell to make
up for his own lack of importance by persecuting Tom Robinson. These rigid
social divisions that make up so much of the adult world are revealed in the
book to be both irrational and destructive. For example, Scout cannot
understand why Aunt Alexandra refuses to let her consort with young Walter Cunningham.
Lee uses the children’s perplexity at the unpleasant layering of Maycomb
society to critique the role of class status and, ultimately, prejudice in
human interaction.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices
that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Gothic
Details
The forces of good and evil in To Kill a Mockingbird seem
larger than the small Southern town in which the story takes place. Lee adds
drama and atmosphere to her story by including a number of Gothic details in
the setting and the plot. In literature, the term Gothic refers to a style of
fiction first popularized in eighteenth-century England, featuring supernatural
occurrences, gloomy and haunted settings, full moons, and so on. Among the Gothic
elements in To Kill a Mockingbird are the
unnatural snowfall, the fire that destroys Miss Maudie’s house, the children’s
superstitions about Boo Radley, the mad dog that Atticus shoots, and the
ominous night of the Halloween party on which Bob Ewell attacks the children.
These elements, out of place in the normally quiet, predictable Maycomb, create
tension in the novel and serve to foreshadow the troublesome events of the
trial and its aftermath.
Small-Town
Life
Counterbalancing
the Gothic motif of the story is the motif of old-fashioned, small-town values,
which manifest themselves throughout the novel. As if to contrast with all of
the suspense and moral grandeur of the book, Lee emphasizes the slow-paced,
good-natured feel of life in Maycomb. She often deliberately juxtaposes
small-town values and Gothic images in order to examine more closely the forces
of good and evil. The horror of the fire, for instance, is mitigated by the
comforting scene of the people of Maycomb banding together to save Miss
Maudie’s possessions. In contrast, Bob Ewell’s cowardly attack on the
defenseless Scout, who is dressed like a giant ham for the school pageant,
shows him to be unredeemably evil.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
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 presents 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.
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