Symbolically Slaughtering Songbirds By Harper Lee

Symbolically Slaughtering Songbirds Innocence: the lack of corruption or impurity within any given thing, but who can truly be innocent? Some say children can. Childhood innocence and whether or not to actively try to preserve and protect it is a highly controversial topic that is constantly up to debate. One side of this debate is that children need to learn things at their own pace, yet others claim that society must shelter them until deemed prepared for “corrupt” information. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee uses the symbol of a mockingbird to push the agenda that childhood innocence is something that needs to be protected and preserved at all costs. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses the symbol of a mockingbird

For centuries the songbird is symbolized as hopeful and peaceful beings that “make music for us to enjoy”. A hungarian folk song captures this through its lyrics, “A totie wee birdie fae yestreen's meh guest...Laive ma hert tae strachil in the middie mirk o nicht / Sing aboot yir pleisure, an bring ma sowel tae licht.” , which translates to “An especially small birdie from yesterday evening’s my guest… Leave my heart to struggle in the middle dark of night / Sing about your pleasure, and bring my soul to light”(Herbert). The “especially small bird” is helping out this struggling individual by “[bringing their] soul to light” through its singing, similar to how mockingbirds “sing their hearts out for us”. Lee’s use of a passive bird shows that if one was to kill this bird, it would represent the destruction of innocence. It is said that “[d]istance or the loss of innocence is thus constructed

After the court case with Tom, the kids have been stripped of a little bit of their innocence because they are learning a lot of very adult material in a short amount of time. In the news, “Mr. Underwood didn't talk about miscarriages of justice, he was writing so children could understand. Mr. Underwood simply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing, sitting, or escaping. He likened Tom's death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children” (Lee 275). This description of the “senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children” is another form of the idea that “it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” which Maudie and Atticus told the kids was wrong. Birds in mythology are highly known for being “seen as carriers or symbols of the human soul, or as the soul itself, flying heavenward after a person died”, and although Tom did die, Harper Lee is using the songbird to symbolize the carrying of the innocence that was destroyed through the entirety of the court case (Birds in Mythology). Tom Robinson was an innocent man that was robbed of his freedom due to his race, and it is known that there are certain types of violence that are damaging to childhood purity, and “[among] the scenes of violence that destroy innocence are those that are cruel, gory or show the sufferings of victims, particularly innocent ones”