Atticus Finch Moral Analysis

To Install a Moral Atticus Finch is considered a strange person by Maycomb, his town, seeing as he is the single father of two while working as a lawyer, defending blacks in a racist society. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird centers around the Finches as they try to keep Tom Robinson alive on fabricated charges while his children begin to learn just how gritty and dangerous life can be. Despite being pressured and attacked due to defending a lost cause, Atticus tries to help his children however he can, keeping them safe and showing them, in a good light, how to view the workings of the world. Overall, Atticus attempts to instill controversial but true morals and values into his children as they grow up. One belief that Atticus instills

After Bob Ewell, the prosecutor of Tom Robinson, attacks the children and dies in the attempt, Atticus refuses to cover it up because he, “‘Don’t want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don’t want anybody saying, [...] Sooner we get this over with the better’” (Lee 366). Atticus would not let the local sheriff say that Jem did not kill Bob Ewell because he thought that Jem did at the time, and wants his kids to know that they should be treated like the rest of the community. Before that, when Atticus was defending Tom Robinson, he was telling the jury that the opposition had lied because they were, “‘confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption—the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women’” (Lee 273). Even though Scout and Jem were not supposed to be there, they learn how racism could kill an innocent man, and through that learn why Atticus had constantly reminded them of why equality is so important. With them learning about equality, they also learn about the town’s racism and how it should not be included in their definition of a person, another mini-lesson taught by Atticus to instruct his kids about