Miss Maudie is one of the few adults who truthfully discuss Boo Radley with Scout. However, it is beyond her ability to get Scout to understand Mr. Radley 's mentality. A confused Scout cannot grasp Mr. Radley 's interpretation of the Bible, as her father 's beliefs are conflicting. In a fit of impatience, Miss Maudie notes “that sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of [another.]” Through this analogy, Miss Maudie tries to explain that people may assign different meanings to the same texts, and that sometimes, these meanings may cause harm.
While Scout is unable to understand why Boo Radley is confined to his home, it is obvious what Miss Maudie 's opinion is: Mr. Radley 's religious beliefs are to blame for Boo 's imprisonment. She shows great scorn for "foot-washing Baptist[s]," and their assumption that "anything that 's pleasure is a sin." However, Miss Maudie does not discredit religion or the Bible; she mentions that she is religious and a Baptist herself. Instead, she carefully points out that the problem with foot-washing Baptists is their interpretation of the Bible, which is one where they "take the Bible literally." Miss Maudie reaffirms this viewpoint when she compares a religious man to a drunk; she emphasizes that a religious man is only "sometimes" worse than a drunk. In this way, she highlights the key role interpretation plays. The Bible itself does not necessarily contain the same message as the one preached by the foot-washing Baptists. It is through interpretation of the Bible that the foot-washing Baptists have come to assume "women are sin by definition," and that it is possible to "spend too
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The extremist Baptists in Maycomb County are an example. Boo had the potential to receive "the best secondary education to be had in the state," but his father refuses this opportunity because of his religious