Chris Yang
Mrs. Booth
English 1 Honors/Pre-IB period 4
Literary Device #2-Symbol
Symbol: A symbol is anything that stands for or represents something else. A conventional symbol is one that is widely known and accepted. A personal symbol is one created for a particular work by a particular author.
Example: “‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people's gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’”(119). Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
Function
Context: Jem and Scout have received air rifles as a Christmas gift from their father Atticus. Unwilling to teach his children the ways of shooting, Atticus tells Jem that he would prefer if he would just shoot tin
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Scout, being a young girl and hearing her father name something as a sin for the first time, wishes to learn more about the wickedness of killing mockingbirds. She asks her neighbor Miss Maudie about the wrongdoing in killing a mockingbird and learns that her father is correct as mockingbirds only benefit their surroundings with their graceful melodies and do no harm.
Concept: The mockingbird is a symbol of innocence in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel, there are two main mockingbirds. They are Boo Radley and Tom Robinson who both have major roles in the novel; one in part one and the latter in part two. Both as symbols of innocence are engulfed by the evil of society and destroyed. Boo Radley is always inside his house and because this breaks the code of society as he is in an established family, rumors are made that Boo has, “a long jagged scar that [runs] along his face; what teeth he [has are] yellow, his eyes [pop], and he [drools] most of the time”(16). There are many possible reasons for Boo remaining inside. It is seen in