How Does Harper Lee Use Foreshadowing In To Kill A Mockingbird

Racism was a huge thing in Southern society, the white people could do whatever they wanted. Harper Lee had To Kill A Mockingbird published in 1960. The book is set in Maycomb County, Alabama, an incredibly racist part of America with segregation being heavily used. It focuses mainly on Scout Finch, the narrator, and her experiences with her father, Atticus, and brother, Jem. During most of the story, Atticus is being criticized because he is going to defend an African American in court, and both of the children take a lot of the heat for it, too. The court case is about an African American named Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell. Lots of events and symbolism leading up to the case foreshadowed what would

In her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee masterfully uses the symbolic significance of a fire, a mad dog, and the snowman to foreshadow events that occur later in the novel. To begin, Lee uses a fire to foreshadow Bob Ewell’s attempts to kill Scout and Jem. Before the trial where Atticus Finch tried to defend Tom Robinson from false accusations of rape, a fire burned down Ms. Maudie’s house, Ms. Maudie is one of the Finch’s neighbors but instead of being like most of the other neighbors she is quite a bit less racist than the rest of them and takes the side of Atticus with the court case, and she was left with almost nothing. Scout and Jem were outside watching as Ms. Maudie’s house burned down and Scout narrates, “Smoke was rolling off our house and Miss Rachel’s house like fog off a riverbank, and men were pulling hoses toward them” (Lee 93). The fire was very close to spreading all over the neighborhood and the Finch’s house even started smoking and catching on fire a little bit. There are the firemen though, and they successfully stop the fire from spreading to other places and are the

Metal ripped on metal and I fell to the ground and rolled as far as I could, floundering to escape my wire prison. More scuffling, and there came a dull crunching sound and Jem screamed.” (Lee 351). Just a little while later, the officer in the county, Heck Tate, finds the body of Bob Ewell, the fire that tried to kill him and destroyed him underneath a tree with a kitchen knife through his ribs. We also find out that their old neighbor Boo Radley, who had been locked up inside his house for many, many years, was the person who saved the children and killed Bob Ewell. So Bob represents the fire that tried to consume the children and take away their lives, the children being the Finch house, and Boo Radley being the firefighter who saved the day and stopped the fire from causing destruction. This all shows how the fire foreshadows a major incident towards the end of the book. Another piece of symbolism was when the mad dog started walking through the neighborhood. Lee uses this to symbolize the killing of innocence, and how the county wouldn’t even think about it if it was dangerous or