In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the theme is that innocence is sacred that once gone cannot be brought back. In an attempt to keep the children from shooting at everything in sight, Miss Maudie explained that there are some creatures that live in false peace, oblivious to the dangers around them. After Uncle Jack gave Jem and Scout air rifles for Christmas, Miss Maudie warned, “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,” (Lee 90). Not only is killing a mockingbird a terrible sin, but it symbolizes both a metaphor and what really happens when kill …show more content…
By killing a mockingbird a person is purposely destroying innocence. However, in the case of Tom Robinson, the Ewells hurt a mockingbird by bringing him into court. When they brought up rape and prejudices, they ruined the innocence of the children in the story by exposing them to such matters. So far throughout the case Atticus is working, Scout has managed to hold onto her innocence as she continues to be blinded by the dangers surrounding her. Late at night in the jailhouse when a group of men joined Atticus, Scout intervened, “”Well, Atticus, I was just sayin’ to Mr. Cunningham that entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time sometimes… that you all’d ride it out together…” I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy i had committed. Entailments seemed all right enough for livingroom talk,” (Lee 154). Clearly oblivious to the danger the men posed upon herself and everyone else in attendance, Scout talked to Mr. Cunningham as a friend because she knew her father had worked with him before, which fortunately forced him to realized they were all the same, after all they were all neighbors. However, Scout isn’t old enough to comprehend the intensity of the situation and