Examples Of Innocence In To Kill A Mockingbird

Innocence in To Kill a Mockingbird Throughout life, people go through varying stages of innocence. Babies are born innocent and, despite any intermittent questioning, by the end of one’s life he comes full circle and die with an innocence recovered within him. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, the plot revolves around individuals’ representations of that characteristic. The ideas that are introduced in Lee’s novel are not only revolutionary to her time period but still relevant today. The protagonist of this story is Scout Finch, a tomboy growing up in a prejudiced, Southern town. She is raised by Atticus Finch, a man trying to instill his own righteous qualities into his children as well. Scout faces many

Boo Radley is the most subsident example of a mockingbird found in this story. When he saves Scout from being killed by Mr. Ewell, the narrator, Scout, directly meets Boo for the first time. He is a man most comfortable in the shadows and unaccustomed to attention. To put it simply, he is a hermit. Despite the obvious evidence pointing to the heroism Boo displays by rescuing Scout, Sheriff Heck Tate refuses to acknowledge the incident as anything more than Bob Ewell simply stabbing himself. If Boo is announced as Scout’s defender, he would be showered with attention and gifts praising him as a saviour. Sheriff Heck Tate

Many individuals within To Kill A Mockingbird are able to identify him as innocent of beating and raping Mayella Ewell based on the abundant supply of sufficient evidence in his favor. Yet the inhabitants of Maycomb cannot allow a colored man’s word to be held above that of a white man. Through Atticus’ choice to defend Tom Robinson, doing so to the best of his ability, the Finch family is even subjected to verbal brutality and the name of “nigger-lovers.” Atticus explains to Scout that it is “just one of those terms that don’t mean anything” (107) but simply something “slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody” (107). Others feared being labeled as such which was one of the reasons Tom Robinson was a sacrificial lamb for themselves. Tom Robinson not only related directly to the innocent and peaceful nature of the mockingbird but is unjustly killed naming his death a