Symbolism In To Kill A Mockingbird

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“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” (119). Harper Lee uses the symbol of the mockingbird to show the loss of innocence as a result of contact with evil in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Tom Robinson, Dill Harris, and Boo Radley are the characters in the novel best described as mockingbirds because they are all stripped of their innocence as a result of an involuntary confrontation with evil. Tom Robinson is killed because he got involved with the Ewells, Dill loses his childhood innocence and his empathy is desensitized from seeing the evils men are capable of doing to each other in Maycomb, and Boo Radley is forced to hide in his house for his entire life