Is Boo Radley Linked to Jeff the Killer?
Though the two stories have major contrasts, the urban legends of Boo Radley. and Jeff the Killer, hold many resembling factors. Throughout the novel of To Kill A Mockingbird one of the main characters is Boo Radley , a creepy neighbor in Maybcomb County that most of the entire town fears. In the book the people of Maycomb have created myths about Boo, depicting him as someone who is crazy, and someone who should not be messed with. While Jeff the Killer is a popular modern urban legend, originating from the internet to scare people. His story centers around a troubled young teen who starts killing people. Like in many urban legends the descriptions of how characters look are typically exaggerated to create a more ominous theme for readers. Overall the story of Boo Radley can make readers intimidated from the six foot, squirrel eating, scissor stabbing maniac. In Boo’s description he supposedly has a long, jagged scar that runs across his face, yellow and rotten teeth, and drools most of the time. While in Jeff the Killer’s urban legend, he is “extremely pale from bleaching his skin, his eyes are surrounded in black skin, he also has a long red lipped smile which he carved into his face with a knife.” Like Boo, his height also reaches around six feet. The physical descriptions of
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In the opening of Jeff the killer’s story readers are thrown into a scene where Jeff is lurking in the shadows of a child’s room ready to kill him. Before he can, the child wakes up, screams, and alarms his parents before Jeff can hurt him. Meanwhile in Boo Radley’s tale the town gossip, Stephanie Crawford, tells the children that Boo had once been watching her sleep from the window in the middle of the night. Despite Boo never trying to hurt Miss Stephanie, the story makes Boo Radley out to be a creepy entity looming over people, similar to