Tkm Theme Essay

830 Words4 Pages

TKM Theme Essay

Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird takes place during the Great Depression in the small town of Maycomb in Alabama. Scout and Jem live in what they think is a good community. From what they know, everyone fits into the community except Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbor. They think this until the trial of Tom Robinson, an African American that is accused a raping a white women, takes place. The kids see something they have never noticed about their community before. This all contributes to one theme of book that Lee is trying to teach us about, experiencing the different kinds of treatments people get can help us better understand the truth about someone. In the beginning of the book, Scout and Jem are still very young and don 't realize the different treatments of people in their …show more content…

Jem, Scout, and Heck Tate all know that Boo fell on his knife, but they still say that Bob fell on his knife. Heck Tate says about Boo, “‘If it were and other man it would be different But not this man, Mr. Finch’”(Lee 370). This shows Heck Tate is beginning to see what kind of person Boo actually is. They cover for him because they realize they killed him for the safety of the kids, not for a bad reason.
Another place the theme ties into the book is after they decided not to charge Boo Radley. Scout and Jem are still unsure why they are going with the false story of Bob Ewell’s death. Atticus says, “‘Well, it’d be sort of like killing a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?’”(Lee 370). Throughout the book people can infer than to kill a mockingbird is a symbol for loss of innocence, so they are stating that if they put Boo Radley in jail it would be a loss of innocence. This shows that they don’t see Boo as a monster anymore. They are beginning to see him as the real, nice person he